Debut book Attention Seeking Behaviour makes the 2026 Goldsmiths Prize shortlist

Aea Varfis-van Warmelo's debut book, Attention Seeking Behaviour, has been shortlisted for the 2026 Goldsmiths Prize, a British award for fiction that stretches what a novel can look like. Goldsmiths announced the shortlist on 30 September 2026, and seven titles made the cut.

The book is narrated by a compulsive liar. That narrator carries the author's own name, a choice that blurs the line between the invented and the personal. The book also mixes fiction with memoir and essay, so a reader moves between made-up scenes and passages that read like the author speaking directly. Peninsular Press publishes it in the UK.

The author is an editor at Granta, the literary magazine, and works as a writer and poet. Before this book, the author published a poetry pamphlet, a short collection of poems printed as a slim booklet. Called Intellectual Property, it came out in 2024 from the Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art.

The Guardian published a review of the book on 30 October 2026, the same day this article was written. Reviews are one way readers decide what to pick up, and this one arrived as the book is in the running for a prize.

The other titles on the shortlist are What Am I, A Deer?, The Rouse, Said the Dead, Dooneen and The Vivisectors. A shortlist is the stage before a winner is named. Being on it means a book has been chosen from a longer list of entries and put in front of prize-watchers, booksellers and readers who follow the award.

For a debut, that kind of exposure can matter. A shortlist places a first book beside more established names and gives it a line in every piece about the prize. Whatever happens when the winner is named, the author's first novel-length work is now in that company.

Readers who want to see the full list can find it on the Goldsmiths Prize website, along with the titles that have been shortlisted in earlier years.