The results of its deliberations will not be made public until after the announcement of the Orange Prize shortlist on 10 May.

Feminist writer Jeanette Winterson's The PowerBook is in contention

Among notable inclusions on the long list are 2000 Booker winner Margaret Atwood for The Blind Assassin, Jeanette Winterson for The PowerBook and Amy Tan's The Bonesetter's Daughter.

The prize was set up in 1996 to celebrate and promote fiction by women throughout the world to the widest range of readers possible.

Any woman writing in English, whatever her nationality and country of residence, is eligible for the �30,000 prize.

Research

The judging panel for the 2001 Orange Prize are journalist Kate Adie, musician Suzanne Vega, managing editor of Amazon.com Dr Rachel Holmes, novelist Emily Perkins and chaired by former Express editor Rosie Boycott.

Last year the Orange Prize published research which reported women novelists had to work harder to get their work to be taken seriously.

To expand on this the Orange organisers have appointed a jury of men to select their own shortlist - journalist John Walsh, novelist Paul Bailey and Carl Newbrook of Waterstone's.

The findings will be studied by the University of Roehampton for a report examining the impact of gender on reading.

Orange Prize for Fiction longlist

• Dog Days, Glenn Miller Nights By Laurie Graham (Black Swan)

• The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood (Bloomsbury)

• In the Blue House by Meaghan Delahunt (Bloomsbury)

• From Caucasia, with love by Danzy Senna (Bloomsbury)

• MotherKind by Jayne Anne Phillips (Cape)

• The PowerBook by Jeanette Winterson (Cape)

• The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt (Chatto& Windus)

• Horse Heaven by Jane Smiley (Faber & Faber)

• Homestead by Rosina Lippi (Flamingo)

• The Bonesetter's Daughter by Amy Tan (Flamingo)

• The Wild by Esther Freud (Hamish Hamilton)

• Hotel World by Ali Smith (Hamish Hamilton)

• Nowhere Else on Earth by Josephine Humphreys (William Heinemann)

• The Hiding Place by Trezza Azzopardi (Picador)

• The Idea of Perfection by Kate Grenville (Picador)

• Fred & Edie by Jill Dawson (Sceptre)

• Fish, Blood & Bone by Leslie Forbes (Weidenfield & Nicolson)

• Ahab's Wife by Sena Jeter Naslund (Women's Press)