Three female writers with strong ties to Canada have been longlisted for the 2013 Man Booker Prize. The literary prize is awarded annually for the best original full-length novel, written in English, by a citizen of the Commonwealth of Nations, Ireland, or Zimbabwe. The prize is worth £60,000 ($93,230 Cdn).

The Luminaries (forthcoming from McClelland & Stewart) is the second novel from Canadian“born, New Zealand“raised Eleanor Catton, whose debut novel, The Rehearsal, won the 2011 Amazon.ca First Novel Award. According to M&S’s website, the young author’s latest novel is a “murder mystery set in a remote gold-mining frontier town in nineteenth-century New Zealand, in which three unsolved crimes link the fates and fortunes of twelve men.”

Ruth Ozeki, nominated for A Tale for the Time Being (Viking Canada), splits her time between New York City and British Columbia. Ozeki’s website describes the novel as a “powerful story about the ways in which reading and writing connect two people who will never meet.”

Alison MacLeod’s novel, Unexploded (forthcoming from Hamish Hamilton Canada), is about a family living in Brighton under the shadow of the Second World War. MacLeod was born in Canada but has lived in England since 1987. She has published two novels: The Changeling in 1996, and The Wave Theory of Angels in 2005.

The other longlisted nominees are:

• Five Star Billionaire, Tash Aw
• We Need New Names, NoViolet Bulawayo
• Harvest, Jim Crace
• The Marrying of Chani Kaufman, Eve Harris
• The Kill, Richard House
• The Lowland, Jhumpa Lahiri
• TransAtlantic, Colum McCann
• Almost English, Charlotte Mendelson
• The Spinning Heart, Donal Ryan
• The Testament of Mary, Colm Tóibín

The Booker Prize jury is made up of broadcaster Martha Kearney, academic Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, broadcaster Natalie Haynes, and essayist and former literary editor Stuart Kelly. The shortlist will be announced Sept. 10 and the winner will be announced Oct. 15.