The New Academy, founded after the 2018 Nobel Prize for Literature was cancelled as a result of sexual assault scandal, has announced a shortlist of four authors.

The four shortlisted authors are French-Caribbean novelist Maryse Condé, British fantasy author Neil Gaiman, Japanese author Haruki Murakami, and Vietnamese-born Canadian writer Kim Thúy.

You can learn more about each of the four shortlisted authors here.

This year’s Nobel Prize in Literature was cancelled in May, after a number of jury members resigned from the Swedish Academy following sexual assault allegations. The New Academy prize was subsequently announced in July.

The New Academy Prize follows the same schedule as the original award and seeks to reward a writer who tells the story of ‘humans in the world’, rather than the writer with the ‘most outstanding work in an ideal direction’, as traditionally awarded by the Swedish Academy.

You can learn more about the New Academy here.

Rather than a secretive and small panel selecting the winner, the New Academy surveyed Swedish librarians who nominated 47 authors for the prize. The shortlist was chosen through a worldwide public vote, and the winner will be chosen by an expert jury, chaired by editor and independent publisher Ann Pålsson.

The winner will be announced on 12 October. The New Academy will be dissolved in December.