Eight books in contention for £30,000 award that has never been won by a woman include Zadie Smith’s story collection Grand Union and poet Fiona Benson’s Vertigo & Ghost

Zadie Smith and Forward prize winner Fiona Benson are among six female authors shortlisted for this year’s Rathbones Folio prize, which has not yet been won by a woman.

Set up in the wake of controversy around the 2011 Booker prize, which saw chair of judges Stella Rimington praising “readability” and books that “zip along”, to the dismay of parts of the literary establishment, the £30,000 prize rewards “the best work of literature of the year, regardless of form”. It has been won in the past by books including Raymond Antrobus’s poetry collection The Perseverance and Richard Lloyd Parry’s look at the aftermath of Japan’s 2011 disaster Ghosts of the Tsunami.

This year Smith’s first short-story collection Grand Union, which moves from dystopia to social satire, is up against three other works of fiction: Valeria Luiselli’s Booker prize-longlisted novel Lost Children Archive, which contrasts a family road trip from New York with the journey of Mexican children attempting to cross the border into the US; James Lasdun’s Victory, made up of two novellas, one exploring a man considering possible infidelity, the other a sexual assault accusation; and Ben Lerner’s The Topeka School, in which Lerner’s alter ego Adam Gordon finishes high school.

Fiona Benson’s Vertigo & Ghost, a series of poems about Zeus as a serial rapist, also makes the shortlist alongside Sinéad Gleeson’s essay collection Constellations, whose subjects move from pregnancy to old age and death. The Observer art critic Laura Cumming’s investigation into the mystery of her mother’s disappearance as a child, On Chapel Sands, is also nominated, as is Azadeh Moaveni’s report into the women who joined Islamic State, Guest House for Young Widows.

Chair of judges Paul Farley said all eight books “speak to their moment and take soundings from fellow writers, past and present. They record, investigate and explore. They navigate their way through various storms, they allow for doubts and uncertainties. Common themes might echo through their collective pages, but in the end each book is irreducibly its own craft and vessel.”

The winner will be announced on 23 March in a ceremony at the British Library.

2020 Folio prize shortlist

Guest House for Young Widows by Azadeh Moaveni

The Topeka School by Ben Lerner

Vertigo & Ghost by Fiona Benson

Victory by James Lasdun

On Chapel Sands by Laura Cumming

Constellations by Sinéad Gleeson

Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli

Grand Union by Zadie Smith