The Nobel prize in literature will be awarded twice on Thursday, after the Swedish body that selects the laureates was engulfed in a sexual assault scandal that forced it to postpone the 2018 ceremony.

Among the favourites are the author of The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood, and the poet Anne Carson, both from Canada, the novelist Maryse Condé, from the French Caribbean island of Guadeloupe, the Japanese author Haruki Murakami and the Kenyan writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o.

The Swedish Academy, founded in 1786, is thought likely to try to avoid any controversy as it seeks to rebuild its reputation after the scandal exposed harassment, furious infighting, conflicts of interest and a culture of secrecy among its 18 members, who are elected for life and seen as the country’s guardians of culture.

The poet Katarina Frostenson was among seven academy members who left the body after bitter rows over how to handle rape accusations made in 2017 against her husband, Frenchman Jean-Claude Arnault, who was also accused of leaking the names of several prize winners.

The couple ran a cultural club in Stockholm that was part-funded by the academy, and several of the assaults committed by Arnault – who is now serving a prison sentence for rape – took place in academy-owned properties.

The academy has since made changes that it says will improve transparency, including allowing members to voluntarily resign, which they could not previously do. It has also pledged to review its lifetime membership policy and appointed five members to its selection committee from outside the body.

Seven new members have been appointed and a respected literature professor, Mats Malm, took over as permanent secretary in June after the resignation of his predecessor, Sara Danius.

The Nobel Foundation, which funds the literary world’s most prestigious prize, said the academy still needed to do more. “I think they can – and to some extent they have already begun doing so – act more openly than they have done in the past and I think that would be a good thing,” said Lars Heikensten, the executive director of the Nobel Foundation, who in May gave the academy the green light to crown a laureate in 2019.

“Our reputation is everything,” Heikensten said. “Obviously it is important to avoid this kind of situation we have been in and of course it cannot be repeated.”

A Swedish literary critic, Madeleine Levy, told Agence-France Presse: “The Nobel prize is for many now associated with #MeToo … and a dysfunctional organisation.”

It seems almost certain that at least one of the laureates will be a woman. The Polish writers Olga Tokarczuk and Hanna Krall, South Korea’s Han Kang, Joyce Carol Oates of the US and the Russian novelist Lyudmila Ulitskaya have all been mentioned as contenders. Only 14 of the 114 laureates since 1901 have been women.

Another male writer thought to be in with a chance is the Romanian novelist Mircea Cărtărescu.

Previous winners of the prize include Bob Dylan (2016), Alice Munro (2013), Orhan Pamuk (2006), Toni Morrison (2003) and Gabriel García Márquez (1982).

One academy member, Anders Olsson, said the committee had looked for a more diverse shortlist this year and tried to move away from a “male-oriented” and “Eurocentric perspective of literature”.