Judging Panel

Di Speirs is the Books Editor, BBC Audio. She produced the first ever Book of the Week on BBC Radio 4 and has directed scores of Book at Bedtimes, dramatisations and short stories. Now the Editor of the London books team she’s responsible for BBC Readings and Audiobooks, Radio 4's Open Book and BookClub, and World Book Club and World Book Cafe on the World Service. A long-time advocate of the formidable power of the short story, she has been integral to the BBC National Short Story Award since it began in 2005, is the returning judge on the panel and is also behind the BBC Young Writers' Award. She has edited three story collections for the BBC. An Honorary member of the RSL, she is a regular literary judge and has been a nominator twice for the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative (Literature). She is a board member of the Edinburgh City of Literature Trust and is on Lancaster University’s Institute for Social Futures Advisory Board. Di Speirs is the Chair of the 2023 Judging Panel.

Prajwal Parajuly, the son of a Nepali mother and a Nepali-Indian father, is the author of The Gurkha’s Daughter: Stories and Land Where I Flee, a novel. His works have been shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize and the Mogford Prize in the UK, the Emile Guimet Prize and the First Novel Prize in France and longlisted for the Story Prize in the US. He lives in Paris and teaches at Sciences Po.

Rachel Long’s debut collection, My Darling from the Lions (Picador 2020 / Tin House 2021) was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, The Costa Book Award, The Rathbones Folio Prize, the Jhalak Prize, and The Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award. The US edition of My Darling from the Lions was a New York Times Book Review, and named one of the 100 must-read books of 2021 by TIME.

Jon Gower is a former BBC Wales arts and media correspondent who has over 40 books to his name. These include The Story of Wales, which accompanied a landmark TV series, the travelogue An Island Called Smith and Y Storïwr which won the Wales Book of the Year. His latest book is The Turning Tide: A Biography of the Irish Sea. Jon is currently writing a Welsh language historical novel about the polar explorer Edgar Evans, a collection of essays about mountains as well as a volume about the American footballer Raymond Chester, due out in 2024. He lives in Cardiff. 

Maggie Shipstead is the New York Times-bestselling author of three novels and a short story collection. Her novel Great Circle was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Women’s Prize for Fiction. She is a graduate of Harvard and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, a former Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford, the recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and the winner of the Dylan Thomas Prize and the L.A. Times Book Prize for First Fiction. She lives in Los Angeles.

Namita Gokhale is a writer and festival director. She is the author of twenty works of fiction and non-fiction. Her acclaimed debut novel, Paro: Dreams of Passion, was published in 1984. Her latest novel The Blind Matriarch examines the Indian joint family against the backdrop of the pandemic.  Jaipur Journals, published in January 2020, is set in the vibrant Jaipur Literature Festival, of which Gokhale is a founder-director. 

Her work spans various genres, including novels, short stories, Himalayan studies, mythology, several anthologies, books for young readers, and a recent play.  Gokhale is the recipient of various prizes and awards, including the prestigious Sahitya Akademi (National Academy of Literature) Award 2021 for her novel Things to Leave Behind. 

Namita is chair of this year's Dylan Thomas Prize judging panel

Alan Bilton is the author of three novels, The End of The Yellow House (Watermark 2020), The Known and Unknown Sea (Cillian, 2014), and The Sleepwalkers' Ball (Alcemi, 2009), described by one critic as 'Franz Kafka meets Mary Poppins'. He is also the author of a collection of surrealist short stories, Anywhere Out of the World. (Cillian, 2016) as well as books on silent film comedy, contemporary fiction, and the 1920s. He was a Hay Festival Writer at Work in 2016 and 2017 and teaches creative writing, literature and film at Swansea University.

Irenosen Okojie is a Nigerian British author whose bold, experimental works create vivid narratives that play with form and language. Her debut novel Butterfly Fish and short story collections Speak Gigantular and Nudibranch have won and been shortlisted for multiple awards. Her work has been optioned for the screen. A fellow and Vice Chair of the Royal Society of Literature, Irenosen is the winner of the 2020 AKO Caine Prize for her story, Grace Jones. She was awarded an MBE For Services to Literature in 2021.

Luke Kennard is a poet and novelist whose sixth collection of poetry, Notes on the Sonnets, won the Forward Prize for Best Collection 2021. His fifth, Cain, was shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize in 2017. His novels, The Transition and The Answer To Everything are available from 4th Estate. He lectures at the University of Birmingham.

Rachel Trezise is a novelist and playwright from the Rhondda Valley. Her debut novel In and Out of the Goldfish Bowl won a place on the Orange Futures List in 2002. In 2006 her first short fiction collection Fresh Apples won the Dylan Thomas Prize. Her second short fiction collection Cosmic Latte won the Edge Hill Prize Readers Award in 2014. Her most recent play ‘Cotton Fingers’ toured Ireland and Wales and won the Summerhall Lustrum Award at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2019. Her most recent novel Easy Meat came out in 2021.

Namita Gokhale is an award-winning writer, publisher and festival director. She is the author of twenty books, including ten works of fiction. Her latest novel Jaipur Journals, published in 2020, is set against the backdrop of the vibrant Jaipur Literature Festival, of which Gokhale is a founder-director. Jaipur Journals will be published in the UK in Spring 2021 by HopeRoad Publishing.

She is director of Yatra Books, a publishing house specialised in translation. Gokhale was conferred the Centenary National Award for Literature by the Assam Sahitya Sabha in Guwahati in 2017. Her novel Things to Leave Behind has won the Sushila Devi Literature Award in January 2019 and Valley of Words Book Award for the Best English Fiction. Follow her on Twitter @NamitaGokhale_

Namita is Chair of the Judging Panel.

Syima Aslam is the founder and Director of the Bradford Literature Festival (BLF), which she established in 2014. In just five years the festival has grown to a 10 day literary and cultural celebration, welcoming 70,000 visitors to Bradford annually. 

Under Syima’s directorship, BLF has made a significant impact on the country’s literary landscape, hailed as ‘one of the most innovative and inspirational festivals in the UK’, bringing together literature from all genres, promoting intercultural fluency, providing a platform for marginalised voices, and reflecting the changing face of contemporary Britain through a programme which celebrates diversity, empathy and artistic excellence. 

Stephen Sexton’s first book, If All the World and Love Were Young was the winner of the Forward Prize for Best First Collection in 2019 and the Shine / Strong Award for Best First Collection. He is the 2020 recipient of the E.M. Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He was the winner of the National Poetry Competition in 2016 and the recipient of an Eric Gregory Award in 2018. He teaches at the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry at Queen’s University, Belfast.

Joshua Ferris is the bestselling author of three novels and a collection of short stories, The Dinner Party. He has been a finalist for the National Book Award, winner of the Barnes and Noble Discover Award and the PEN/Hemingway Award, short-listed for the Man Booker Prize, winner of the International Dylan Thomas Prize, and was named one of The New Yorker's "20 Under 40" writers in 2010. He lives in New York.

Francesca Rhydderch is a novelist and academic. In 2014, her debut novel The Rice Paper Diaries was longlisted for the Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award and won the Wales Book of the Year Fiction Prize. Her short stories have been published in anthologies and magazines and broadcast on Radio 4 and Radio Wales. She was the recipient of a BBC/Tŷ Newydd bursary in 2010, and in 2014 she was shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award. She subsequently co-edited Seren Books’ most recent fiction anthology New Welsh Short Stories with Penny Thomas, and has been Associate Professor in Creative Writing at Swansea University since 2015.

Lucy Caldwell Belfast-born Lucy Caldwell was shortlisted for the inaugural Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize in 2006 for her debut novel, Where They Were Missed, and won the award in 2011 for her second novel, The Meeting Point.  She has since written a third novel, several stage plays and radio dramas and, most recently, two collections of short stories, Multitudes (2016) and Intimacies, forthcoming with Faber in June, as well as editing the critically-acclaimed anthology Being Various: New Irish Short Stories (2019).  She was recently elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.  She tweets at @beingvarious.

Namita Gokhale is an award-winning writer, publisher and festival director. She is the author of eighteen books, including ten works of fiction. Her latest novel, Jaipur Journals, will be released in January 2020. Gokhale is a founder and co-director of the Jaipur Literature Festival and of Mountain Echoes, the Bhutan Literature Festival. She is also one of the founder directors of Yatra Books, a publishing house specialised in translation. Follow her on Twitter @NamitaGokhale_

Professor Kurt Heinzelman is a poet, translator, and scholar. His most recent book of poems is Whatever You May Say and he has translated Demarcations, a collection of poems by Jean Follain. He has been the Executive Curator at the Harry Ransom Centre and the Director of Education at the Blanton Museum of Art. A Professor of English at the University of Texas-Austin specializing in Poetry and Poetics and a teacher in the Michener Centre for Writers, he is also the former Editor-in-Chief of Texas Studies in Literature and Language (TSLL), and the co-founder and long-time Advisory Editor of Bat City Review. 

Max Liu grew up in Cornwall in a community of artists and writers. He's written about arts, culture and society for the i, the Financial Times and the Guardian. He reviews books and interviews authors for newspapers and has been a guest on Radio Four’s Open Book. In 2019, he interviewed, among others, Elif Shafak, Isabel Allende, Jhumpa Lahiri and wrote elsewhere about subjects including men’s responses to the #MeToo movement and the gendered nature of housework. His essay about losing friends in his thirties went viral and sparked debates about the nature of male friendship. He lives in London where he regularly chairs literary events. Follow him on Twitter @maxjliu

Ian McMillan is a writer and broadcaster who presents The Verb on BBC Radio 3 every Friday night. He's written poems, plays, a verse autobiography Talking Myself Home and a voyage round Yorkshire in Neither Nowt Nor Summat. He watches Darfield and Yorkshire Cricket Clubs and the only time he played cricket, at Low Valley Juniors in 1963, Mrs Hudson told him to take his balaclava off or she'd make him wear his mother's Rainmate. Ian’s latest collection is To Fold The Evening Star - New and Selected Poems (Carcanet). Ian was recently awarded The Freedom of Barnsley .

Ian is poet-in-residence for The Academy of Urbanism, Barnsley FC and now Barnsley Poet Laureate. As well as presenting The Verb every week, he’s a regular on BBC Breakfast, Coast, Countryfile, Pointless Celebrities, Pick of the Week, Last Word and BBC Proms Plus. He’s been a castaway on Desert Island Discs. Previously, he was resident poet for English National Opera, UK Trade & Investment, Yorkshire TV’s Investigative Poet and Humberside Police’s Beat Poet. He also narrates the stories of The Yorkshire Dales and The Lakes (More4).

Now, he’s writing a libretto, The Tin Soldier, with Jonathan Dove for Leeds Festival Chorus, then a new show for Mikron Theatre’s 50^th anniversary year of touring in 2021 and a libretto for a Yorkshire Barber of Seville with Freedom Studios. Cats make him sneeze. @IMcMillan www.ian-mcmillan.co.uk

Bridget Minamore is a British-Ghanaian writer, poet, critic, and dramaturg from south-east London. As a journalist, she is a contributor to The Guardian. She was chosen as one of Speaking Volumes’ 40 Stars of Black British Literature, has read her work internationally, and is the co-lead tutor for the Roundhouse Poetry Collective. Titanic (Out-Spoken Press), Bridget’s debut pamphlet of poems on modern love and loss, was published in May 2016. She is currently working on her first novel, an extract of which was published in anthology New Daughters of Africa (Myriad) in 2019. She tweets @bridgetminamore

Professor Dai Smith CBE is a distinguished historian and writer on Welsh arts and culture. As a Broadcaster he has won numerous awards for arts and historical documentaries and from 1992 to 2000 was Head of Programmes at BBC Wales. He was Pro-Vice Chancellor of the University of Glamorgan from 2001 until 2005 and is currently the Emeritus Raymond Williams Research Chair in the Cultural History of Wales at Swansea University. He was Chair of the Arts Council of Wales from 2006 until 2016. In 2013, he published a novel Dream On and in 2014 edited definitive anthologies of Welsh short stories, Story I & II, for the Library of Wales. In 2020 he published the novel, The Crossing, as the final part of his projected fictional trilogy of work. Professor Smith is Chair of the Judging Panel. 

Namita Gokhale is an Indian writer, publisher and festival director.  She is the author of sixteen books including nine works of fiction.  Her debut novel, Paro: Dreams of Passion was first published in 1984, and has remained a cult classic.  The Himalayan trilogy includes the recent Things to Leave Behind, considered her most ambitious novel yet.  She has worked extensively on Indian myth and also written two books for young readers. 

Namita is a co-founder and co-director of the ZEE Jaipur Literature Festival, considered the largest free literary festival in the world, as well as of ‘Mountain Echoes’, the annual Bhutan Literature Festival.  She is also a director of Yatra Books, a publishing house specialised in translation. 

Professor Kurt Heinzelman is a poet, translator, and scholar. His most recent book of poems is Whatever You May Say and he has translated Demarcations, a collection of poems by Jean Follain. He has been the Executive Curator at the Harry Ransom Center and the Director of Education at the Blanton Museum of Art. 

A Professor of English at the University of Texas-Austin specializing in Poetry and Poetics and a teacher in the Michener Center for Writers, he is also the former Editor-in-Chief of Texas Studies in Literature and Language (TSLL), and the co-founder and longtime Advisory Editor of Bat City Review. 

Paul McVeigh began his writing career in Belfast as a playwright before moving to London to write comedy which was performed at the Edinburgh Festival and on London's West End.  His short stories have been read on BBC Radio 3, 4 & 5 and 'Hollow' was shortlisted for Irish Short Story of the Year at the Irish Book Awards in 2017.

His debut novel The Good Son won The Polari First Novel Prize and was shortlisted for many others including the Prix du Roman Cezam in France.  He is associate director of Word Factory, the UK's national organisation for excellence in the short story and he is founder of the London Short Story Festival.  Paul's work has been translated into seven languages. 

Rachel Trezise is a novelist and playwright from the Rhondda Valley in South Wales. Her debut novel In and Out of the Goldfish Bowl won a place on the Orange Futures list in 2001 and has recently been added to the Library of Wales series. Her debut short fiction collection Fresh Apples won the inaugural International Dylan Thomas Prize in 2006. Her second short fiction collection Cosmic Latte won the Edge Hill Prize Readers’ Award in 2014. Her stage plays are Tonypandemonium and We’re Still Here produced by National Theatre Wales in 2013 and 2017. A new novel, Wonderful, will be published in June 2018. A new short story collection and two new plays are forthcoming.

Professor Dai Smith CBE is a distinguished historian and writer on Welsh arts and culture.  As a Broadcaster he has won numerous awards for arts and historical documentaries and from 1992 to 2000 was Head of Programmes at BBC Wales.  He was Pro-Vice Chancellor of the University of Glamorgan from 2001 until 2005 and is currently the Emeritus Raymond Williams Research Chair in the Cultural History of Wales at Swansea University.

He was Chair of the Arts Council of Wales from 2006 until 2016 and is Series Editor of the Welsh Assembly Government’s Library of Wales for classic works. In 2013, he published a novel Dream On and in 2014 edited definitive anthologies of Welsh short stories, Story I & II, for the Library of Wales. His latest fiction, the novella What I Know I Cannot Say, and the linked short stories All That Lies Beneath, was published by Parthian Books in 2017.

Professor Smith is Chair of the Judging Panel.

Professor Kurt Heinzelman is a poet, translator, and scholar. His most recent book of poems is Intimacies & Other Devices and he has translated Demarcations, a collection of poems by Jean Follain.  He has been the Executive Curator at the Harry Ransom Center and the Director of Education at the Blanton Museum of Art. 

A Professor of Poetry and Poetics at the University of Texas-Austin and teacher in the Michener Center for Writers, he is also Editor-in-Chief of Texas Studies in Literature and Language (TSLL), and the co-founder and currently Advisory Editor of Bat City Review.  

Alison Hindell is Head of Audio Drama, UK for the BBC.  She has directed over 260 radio plays, from international co-productions to soap opera, and has won many awards.  She runs one of the biggest radio drama production departments in the world and is responsible for the creation of over 400 hours of drama, ranging from the iconic Archers(including steering the Helen & Rob story to its culmination this year) to award-winning new writing and classics for many BBC radio networks.  Most recently, she has worked with internationally acclaimed theatre director Robert Wilson on a multi-lingual co-production with German broadcasters called Tower of Babel.  Alison worked for the Royal Shakespeare Company before joining the BBC and has directed theatre and worked as voice and casting director on several international animations.  She is currently Visiting Professor in Radio Drama for the University of Derby and a Fellow of the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama.  (Image credit Mark Bassett.)

Professor Sarah Moss was born in Glasgow, grew up mostly in Manchester and studied at Oxford. She began her academic career with a doctoral thesis on Wordsworth, Coleridge and travel writing, and wrote a monograph on food and gender in eighteenth-century literature before turning to fiction. Her novels are Cold Earth (Granta, 2009), Night Waking (Granta, 2011), Bodies of Light(Granta, 2014), Signs for Lost Children (Granta, 2015) and The Tidal Zone (Granta, 2016). She has also written a memoir of a year spent in Iceland, Names for the Sea (Granta, 2012). Sarah has taught at the Universities of Oxford, Kent, Exeter and Iceland, and has been part of the Warwick Writing Programme since 2012.

Prajwal Parajuly is the son of an Indian father and a Nepalese mother. The Gurkha's Daughter, his debut collection of short stories, was a finalist for the International Dylan Thomas Prize in 2013 and a semi-finalist for The Story Prize. Land Where I Flee, his first novel, was an Independent on Sunday book of the year and a Kansas City Star best book of 2015. Prajwal is the Clayton B. Ofstad endowed distinguished writer-in-residence at Truman State University in Kirksville, Missouri. He has written for The New York Times, TheGuardian, the New Statesman and the BBC.  (Image credit Max Korndörfer.)

Professor Dai Smith CBE is a distinguished historian and writer on Welsh arts and culture.  As a Broadcaster he has won numerous awards for arts and historical documentaries and from 1992 to 2000 was Head of Programmes at BBC Wales.  He was Pro-Vice Chancellor of the University of Glamorgan from 2001 until 2005 and is currently the Emeritus Raymond Williams Research Chair in the Cultural History of Wales at Swansea University.

He was Chair of the Arts Council of Wales from 2006 until 2016 and is Series Editor of the Welsh Assembly Government’s Library of Wales for classic works. In 2013, he published a novel Dream On and in 2014 edited definitive anthologies of Welsh short stories, Story I & II, for the Library of Wales. His latest fiction, the novella What I Know I Cannot Say, and the linked short stories All That Lies Beneath, was published by Parthian Books in 2017.

Professor Smith is Chair of the Judging Panel.

Sarah Hall is the author of five novels -  Haweswater, The Electric Michelangelo, The Carhullan Army, How To Paint A Dead Man and The Wolf Border  – as well as the short story collection The Beautiful Indifference, winner of the Portico Prize for Fiction and the Edge Hill short story prize.  Her novels have been shortlisted for a number of prestigious awards, including the Man Booker Prize, the Prix Femina Etranger, and the Arthur C. Clarke Award for science fiction. The Carhullan Army was listed as one of The Times 100 Best Books of the Decade.

An honorary fellow of Aberystwyth University and a fellow of the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, Sarah tutors for the Faber Academy, The Guardian and the Arvon Foundation.

Kurt Heinzelman is a poet, translator, and scholar.

His most recent book of poems is Intimacies & Other Devices and he has translated Demarcations, a collection of poems by Jean Follain.  He has been the Executive Curator at the Harry Ransom Center and the Director of Education at the Blanton Museum of Art.  

A Professor of Poetry and Poetics at the University of Texas-Austin, he is also Editor-in-Chief of Texas Studies in Literature and Language (TSLL), and the co-founder and currently Advisory Editor of Bat City Review.

Phyllida Lloyd, CBE, is an award winning British director of stage and screen, including Mamma Mia! and The Iron Lady.

Her theatrical works include: Josephine and I (Bush/Public Theater NY); Henry IV, Julius Caesar (Donmar Warehouse/St Ann’s Warehouse, NY); The Rime of The Ancient Mariner with Fiona Shaw, Mary Stuart (Donmar Warehouse, Apollo, and Broadway - Tony Nomination);  Mamma Mia!(London, Broadway, Worldwide); The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, The Duchess of Malfi, The Way of The World, Pericles (Royal National Theatre). Operatic works include: La Boheme, Medea, Carmen, Gloriana, Peter Grimes (Opera North);Macbeth (Paris/ROH); The Handmaid's Tale, The Carmelites, Verdi Requiem, Rheingold, Valkyrie, Siegfried, Twilight of The Gods (ENO). Phyllida was the 2006 Cameron Mackintosh Professor of Drama at St Catherine's College Oxford. 

Kamila Shamsie is the author of six novels, translated into more than 25 languages, including A God in Every Stone (shortlisted for the Bailey’s Women’s Prize for Fiction) and Burnt Shadows (shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction).  

A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and one of Granta’s ‘Best Young British Novelists’, she grew up in Karachi, and now lives in London.

Owen Sheers is a novelist, poet, and playwright and Professor in Creativity at Swansea University.

He is the author of two collections of poetry, The Blue Book and Skirrid Hill and the award-winning verse drama Pink Mist, while his non-fiction includes The Dust Diaries and Calon:  A Journey to the Heart of Welsh Rugby. Twice winner of Welsh book of the Year Owen has written several plays including The Passion, Mametz and The Two Worlds of Charlie F., winner of the Amnesty International Freedom of Expression Award. He has been a NYPL Cullman Fellow, Artist in Residence for the Welsh Rugby Union, and is an honorary life fellow of the IWA.

His latest novel, I Saw A Man (Faber, 2015) has been published across Europe and North America and is shortlisted for the Prix Femina Etranger.

Dai Smith is a distinguished historian and writer on Welsh arts and culture. He was Pro-Vice Chancellor of the University of Glamorgan from 2001 until 2005 and is currently The Raymond Williams Research Chair in the Cultural History of Wales at Swansea University.

He was Chair of the Arts Council of Wales from 2006 to 2016, and is Series Editor of the Welsh Assembly Government’s Library of Wales for classic works. In 2013, he published a novel Dream On and in 2014 edited definitive anthologies of Welsh Short Stories, Story I & II, for the Library of Wales.

Professor Smith is Chair of the Judging Panel.

Peter Florence - Founder of the Hay Festival and Chairman of the judging panel.

Allison Pearson - Novelist and Daily Telegraph columnist.

Cerys Matthews - Author, singer and BBC 6 music presenter.

Carolyn Hitt - Journalist and author.

Nick Wroe - Guardian Review journalist.

Kurt Heinzelman - Poet, translator and Professor of English, University of Texas at Austin.

Tishani Doshi - India-based poet, journalist and dancer.

Peter Stead - Founder and President of the International Dylan Thomas Prize.