The Cassava Republic author makes the women’s award shortlist in her 20th year

The Mercy Step by Marcia Hutchinson, published by Cassava Republic Press, has been shortlisted for the 2026 Women’s Prize for Fiction, one of the most prestigious literary prizes in the world.

This bodes well for Nigerian publishing house Cassava Republic Press, which for the first time in the prize’s history makes the shortlist for the Women’s Prize for Fiction and its twentieth anniversary marks a significant moment not only for the author, but for independent African publishing on the global stage.

In announcing that Marcia Hutchinson’s The Mercy Step has been shortlisted for the 2026 Women’s Prize for Fiction, Cassava Republic Press said that this moment belongs to more than one book and more than one publisher.

This is the first time a small press owned by African and Black women has made this shortlist in the award’s 30-year history. The publishing house further noted that the recognition confirms what Cassava Republic has always believed: that black, complex, tender and unshakable stories belong at the center of global literary culture, not on its margins.

Reacting to the shortlist, Bibi Bakare-Yusuf, founder and editorial director of Cassava Republic Press, said: “We are honored and proud. This is the purpose of independent black-owned publishing: not as a corrective to the mainstream, but as a home. A place where a writer can debut at sixty. Where a story rooted in black British life can be treated with all the literary ambition it deserves. We started in Abuja twenty years ago with passion and a unshakable belief that African storytelling belonged to the world, today the world agrees.”

Founded in Abuja, Nigeria, in 2006, Cassava Republic Press has spent nearly two decades publishing bold, original writing from across Africa and the diaspora. Marcia Hutchinson published her debut novel at sixty. The Mercy Step was rejected by over 50 publishers before being accepted and published by Cassava Republic.

Set in Bradford in the 1960s, the novel follows Mercy, the youngest daughter of a Windrush generation Jamaican family, who finds herself dealing with a family shaped by her father’s violence, her mother’s fierce faith and the unbreakable love between siblings. Carefully observed, deeply moving, and told through the unyielding voice of a child, it is a novel about silence, resilience, and the quiet acts of defiance that shape a life.

Critics and authors described the novel in glowing terms, and the Observer hailed it as “a dark and funny narrative that passionately captures the unique realities of the northern black experience, told with imaginative power from a child’s point of view.”

Paterson Joseph, actor and author, described it as “a moving and perfectly observed insight into black British life with the hallmarks of a modern classic”, while for Irenosen Okojie, author, the novel is “a brilliant debut with a child protagonist who is impossible to look away from”.

Hutchinson is a British-Jamaican lawyer, community activist and recipient of an MBE. This is his debut novel.

The winner of the £30,000 Women’s Prize for Fiction will be announced on 11 June 2026 in London. The paperback edition of The Mercy Step is available April 30, 2026.