Monique Roffey leads strong showing for indies on Rathbones Folio shortlist

The Costa winner is up for award honouring the best work of literature regardless of genre, alongside many other titles from small presses

Fresh from winning the Costa book of the year award and topping bestseller charts for the first time with a book for which she was forced to crowdfund her own publicity, Monique Roffey has been shortlisted for another major award: the £30,000 Rathbones Folio prize.

Roffey’s Costa-winning tale The Mermaid of Black Conch, about a centuries-old mermaid who falls in love with a fisher, is one of eight titles up for the Folio, which aims to reward the year’s best work of literature regardless of form. The Trinidadian-born British writer’s novel, draws on a legend from the Taino, an indigenous people of the Caribbean. This week, it was No 1 in the paperback fiction charts.

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