As submissions open for next year's Booker Prize, the 2024 judging panel for the leading literary award in the English-speaking world has been announced.
ADVERTISEMENTThe judges for next year's Booker Prize have been announced as the prestigious literary awards also open up for submissions from publishers.
Porcelain potter and author Edmund de Waal will chair the 2024 judging panel, known for his striking large-scale art installations and books such as 'The Hare with Amber Eyes', which was awarded the Costa Book Award for Biography in 2011.
De Waal will be joined by award-winning novelist Sara Collins, the Guardian's deputy literature editor Justine Jordan, world-renowned writer and professor Yiyun Li, and musician, composer and producer Nitin Sawhney.
"The great ambition of the Booker Prize is to explore contemporary fiction without preconceptions, and I am so privileged to be sharing my year of reading with such a gloriously distinguished and vigorous group of fellow explorers. I am looking forward to being part of the best book club ever," Edmund de Waal said in a press release.
The judges will be looking to find the best works of long-form English-language fiction by writers of any nationality, published in the UK and/or Ireland between October 1, 2023 and September 30, 2024.
From these, they will whittle their choices down to between 12 or 13 long-listed books, which are known as the 'Booker Dozen' and will be announced in July 2024.
A final shortlist of six titles will then be picked in September 2024 and the overall winner of the Booker Prize 2024 announced in November 2024.
"This year’s judges are perceptive readers, creative thinkers, seasoned collaborators. All of them are writers, but between them they also have backgrounds in science, law, music and art. Their lived experience spans the globe," Gaby Wood, Chief Executive of the Booker Prize Foundation said in a press release.
"Their Chair, Edmund de Waal, is deeply respected the world over for his ability to put people, books and works of art in conversation with one another," Wood added.
The Booker Prize winner receives a £50,000 (approximately €5,8081) cash prize, while each of the six shortlisted authors are also given £2,500 (approximately €2,904) each.
Previous Booker Prize winners include Irish writer Paul Lynch for his dystopian novel 'Prophet Song' in 2023 and Sri Lankan writer Shehan Karunatilaka for 'The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida' in 2022.
Winning the award is considered one of the highest accolades in the world of English-language fiction, and usually changes the lives of the authors through increasing their book sales and cementing their place as literary icons.
Submissions are now open to UK and Irish publishers, with deadlines staggered between January 29 and June 3, 2024.
