The Booker Prize, formerly known as the Booker Prize for Fiction (1969–2001) and the Man Booker Prize (2002–2019), is a literary prize awarded each year for the best novel written in English and published in the United Kingdom or Ireland. The winner of the Booker Prize receives international publicity which usually leads to a sales boost. When the prize was first created, only novels written by Commonwealth, Irish, and South African citizens were eligible to receive the prize; in 2014 it was widened to any English-language novel—a change that proved controversial. A seven-person panel constituted by authors, librarians, literary agents, publishers, and booksellers is appointed by the Booker Prize Foundation.
The Royal Society of Literature (RSL) is a learned society founded in 1820, by King George IV, to "reward literary merit and excite literary talent". A charity that represents the voice of literature in the UK, the RSL has about 600 Fellows, elected from among the best writers in any genre currently at work. Additionally, Honorary Fellows are chosen from those who have made a significant contribution to the advancement of literature, including publishers, agents, librarians, booksellers or producers. The society is a cultural tenant at London's Somerset House.
Ali Smith CBE FRSL is a Scottish author, playwright, academic and journalist. Sebastian Barry described her in 2016 as "Scotland's Nobel laureate-in-waiting".
Helon Habila Ngalabak is a Nigerian novelist and poet, whose writing has won many prizes, including the Caine Prize in 2001. He worked as a lecturer and journalist in Nigeria before moving in 2002 to England, where he was a Chevening Scholar at the University of East Anglia, and now teaches creative writing at George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia.
Jane Harris is a British writer of fiction and screenplays. Her novels have been published in over 20 territories worldwide and translated into many different languages. Her most recent work is the novel Sugar Money which has been shortlisted for several literary prizes.
Bernardine Anne Mobolaji Evaristo, is a British author and academic. Her novel Girl, Woman, Other, won the Booker Prize in 2019, making her the first black woman and the first black British person to win the Booker.
Uzma Aslam Khan is a Pakistani writer. Her five novels include Trespassing (2003), The Geometry of God (2008), Thinner Than Skin (2012) and The Miraculous True History of Nomi Ali (2019).
Nadifa Mohamed is a Somali-British novelist. She featured on Granta magazine's list "Best of Young British Novelists" in 2013, and in 2014 on the Africa39 list of writers aged under 40 with potential and talent to define future trends in African literature. Her 2021 novel, The Fortune Men, was shortlisted for the 2021 Booker Prize, making her the first British Somali novelist to get this honour. She has also written short stories, essays, memoirs and articles in outlets including The Guardian, and contributed poetry to the anthology New Daughters of Africa. She was also a lecturer in Creative Writing in the Department of English at Royal Holloway, University of London until 2021. She will be Distinguished Writer in Residence at New York University in Spring 2022.
The Women's Prize for Fiction is one of the United Kingdom's most prestigious literary prizes. It is awarded annually to a female author of any nationality for the best original full-length novel written in English and published in the United Kingdom in the preceding year.
Leone Ross is a British novelist, short story writer, editor, journalist and academic, who is of Jamaican and Scottish ancestry.
Diana Omo Evans FRSL is a British novelist, journalist and critic who was born and lives in London. Evans has written three full-length novels. Her first novel, 26a, published in 2005, won the Orange Award for New Writers, the Betty Trask Award and the deciBel Writer of the Year award. Her third novel Ordinary People was shortlisted for the 2019 Women's Prize for Fiction and won the 2019 South Bank Sky Arts Award for Literature.
Reni Eddo-Lodge is a British journalist and author, whose writing primarily focuses on feminism and exposing structural racism. She has written for a range of publications, including The New York Times, The Guardian, The Independent, The Daily Telegraph, The Voice, BuzzFeed, Vice, i-D and Dazed & Confused, and is a contributor to the 2019 anthology New Daughters of Africa, edited by Margaret Busby.
Irene Sabatini is an author from Zimbabwe who writes fiction. She earned the Orange Award for New Writers in 2010 for her first novel, The Boy Next Door, a love story set against the backdrop of racism and political turmoil of 1980s Zimbabwe. Her second novel, Peace and Conflict, covers family and political history through the eyes of a ten-year-old boy.
Mr Loverman is the seventh novel written by British-Nigerian author Bernardine Evaristo, published by Penguin Books in 2013 and Akashic Books in 2014. Mr Loverman explores the life of Britain's older Caribbean community, through the perspective of a 74-year-old Antiguan-Londoner and closet homosexual, Barrington Jedidiah Walker. In 2014, Mr Loverman won the Jerwood Uncovered Prize.
The Emperor's Babe is a verse novel written by British author Bernardine Evaristo. Published by Penguin in 2001, it is Evaristo's second work of fiction. Based in London around 1800 years ago, it follows the story of black Nubian teenage girl, Zuleika, who comes of age in the Roman period. The Emperor's Babe won the Arts Council Writers Award in 2000, a NESTA Fellowship Award in 2003 and was chosen by The Times as one of the 100 Best Books of the Decade in 2010. In 2013, it was also adapted into a BBC Radio 4 play.
Soul Tourists is an experimental novel written by British-Nigerian author, Bernardine Evaristo. Published in 2005 by Penguin, Soul Tourists draws on elements of prose, poetry, scripts and other non-fiction devices. Featuring historical figures of the past, it tells the story of a mismatched black British couple travelling from Europe to the Middle East.
Girl, Woman, Other is the eighth novel to be written by Bernardine Evaristo. Published in 2019 by Hamish Hamilton, it follows the lives of 12 characters in the United Kingdom over the course of several decades. The book was the co-winner of the 2019 Booker Prize, alongside Margaret Atwood's The Testaments. It has received over 30 Book of the Year and Decade honours, alongside recognition as one of Barack Obama's top 19 books for 2019 and Roxane Gay's favourite book of 2019. Its prizes include Fiction Book of the Year at the 2020 British Book Awards, where she also won Author of the Year. It also won the Indie Book Award for Fiction and the Gold Medal of Honorary Patronage. It received many nominations and was finalist for the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction, the Australia Book Industry Awards, and the Women's Prize for Fiction.
Douglas Stuart is a Scottish-American writer and fashion designer. His debut novel, Shuggie Bain, was awarded the 2020 Booker Prize. His second novel, Young Mungo, was published in April 2022.
Nicola Williams is a barrister specialising in criminal law. Since 2009, she has been a part-time Crown Court Judge sitting on the London and South Eastern Circuit.
