Sunjeev Sahota, author of The Year of the Runaways which has been shortlisted for the 2016 International Dylan Thomas prize Photograph: Christopher Thomond for the Guardian.

International Dylan Thomas prize 2016 unveils 'phenomenally talented' shortlist

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An ‘astounding array’ of work by six young writers, including Sunjeev Sahota and the Guardian first book award winner Andrew McMillan, will compete for the £30,000 prize in May

Guardian first book award winner Andrew McMillan’s poetry collection Physical is competing with Sunjeev Sahota’s Booker-shortlisted novel The Year of the Runaways for the £30,000 International Dylan Thomas prize.

Awarded for the best work of English-language fiction – poetry, novels, short stories or drama – by an author aged 39 or under, the prize is named after the Welsh poet who died at the age of 39 in 1953. Chair of judges professor Dai Smith from Swansea University said this year’s shortlist showed “an astounding array of form, genre and achievement from such young writers”.

Guardian first book award 2015 goes to poet Andrew McMillan

McMillan was picked for his collection of poetry celebrating the male body, Physical, already winner of the Guardian first book award, and Sahota for his novel about 13 young men who have fled India and are now living in a house in Sheffield.

A second collection of poetry, Frances Leviston’s Disinformation, also makes the cut for this year’s prize, as does a second novel, Tania James’ The Tusk That Did the Damage, in which an elephant orphaned by poachers terrorises the countryside, killing humans and then burying them under leaves.

Claire-Louise Bennett’s debut short story collection Pond, narrated by a solitary woman on the edge of a coastal town, and Max Porter’s novella Grief Is the Thing with Feathers, in which the death of a mother brings Ted Hughes’ mythological Crow to her grieving young family, complete the shortlist.

The author Sarah Hall, who judged the prize with Smith, the writers Kurt Heinzelman, Kamila Shamsie and Owen Sheers, and the director Phyllida Lloyd, said the books on the shortlist “have perhaps only one thing in common – literary ambition and the breathtakingly successful execution of their visions, but otherwise they resist categorisation”.

“Structurally, narratively, and linguistically they innovate, breaking down boundaries, reaching the reader in new and unexpected ways. There is such a wide range of perspectives, playfulness, intellect, strange and deadly serious content, and a depth of humanity that it is hard to know where to begin in describing each,” said Hall. “One thing is clear, these six writers are phenomenally talented, and absolutely worthy of a place on a prize list bearing the name and spirit of Dylan Thomas.”

The winner, joining former Dylan Thomas prize winners including Maggie Shipstead and Joshua Ferris, will be announced on 15 May.