2014 Category Judges FIRST NOVEL AWARD Joanne Finney Books Editor, Good Housekeeping Joanne Finney began her career in book publishing before becoming a journalist. She s worked in women s magazines for the last decade and has been Books Editor of Good Housekeeping magazine since 2011. Joe Haddow Producer, Radio 2 Book Club Joe is the Producer of the Radio 2 Book Club and is responsible for overseeing all book content on the UK s most popular radio station. He chairs the committee that choose the Radio 2 Book Club titles, which are featured every two weeks on Simon Mayo s Drivetime programme and also produces and presents special book content for the Radio 2 Arts Show. Maggie O Farrell Writer Maggie O'Farrell is the author of six novels, After You d Gone, My Lover s Lover, The Distance Between Us, which won a Somerset Maugham Award, The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, The Hand That First Held Mine, which won the 2010 Costa Novel Award, and Instructions for a Heatwave, which was shortlisted for the 2013 Costa Novel Award. She lives in Edinburgh.
NOVEL AWARD Elizabeth Buchan Author Elizabeth Buchan began her career as a blurb writer at Penguin Books after graduating from the University of Kent. She moved on to become a fiction editor at Random House before leaving to write full time. Her novels include the prizewinning Consider the Lily and Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman which was made into a CBS Primetime Drama. Later novels include The Second Wife, Separate Beds and Daughters. Her latest, I Can t Begin to Tell You, a story of resistance in wartime Denmark, will be published by Penguin in August 2014. Bernardine Evaristo MBE Writer Bernardine Evaristo is the author of seven books of fiction and verse fiction. She is a literary critic, teaches creative writing at Brunel University and has judged many leading literary awards. She has also won several literary awards including the EMMA Best Book, a 2014 Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize for Mr Loverman, Big Red Read, NESTA Fellowship Award and an Arts Council Writers Award. Two of her books have been adapted into BBC R4 dramas. She was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2004, the Royal Society of Arts in 2006, and she was made an MBE in 2009. Jasper Sutcliffe Head of Buying, Foyles Jasper Sutcliffe joined Foyles in November 1999 as a Bookseller in the Fiction Department after finishing a degree in English Literature and Film Studies at Middlesex University. He moved on to become Fiction Buyer in 2002 and subsequently Senior Buyer in 2006. In 2009 he was promoted to his current position of Head of Buying for the Foyles Group.
BIOGRAPHY AWARD Paul Laity Non-Fiction Books Editor, The Guardian Paul Laity is Non-Fiction Books Editor at the Guardian and works on the Saturday Review. After a brief spell as a lecturer at Oxford University, he was an editor at the London Review of Books for a dozen years, before moving to the Guardian, where he sends biographies and other non-fiction books out for review, as well as commissioning features, essays, columns and interviews. He edited the Left Book Club Anthology, and occasionally writes about books and arts for the Guardian and other publications. Wendy Moore Author and Freelance Journalist Wendy Moore is an author and freelance journalist. Her first book The Knife Man was published in 2005, won the UK Medical Journalists Association Consumer Book Award and inspired a pilot for a TV series, Knifeman, currently being developed by AMC with Tom Hollander and Daniel Mays in lead roles. Her second book, Wedlock, was published in 2009. It was picked for Channel 4 s TV Book Club and reached no 1 in the Sunday Times bestseller list. Her third, How to Create the Perfect Wife, came out in 2013. She is currently working on a novel and a fourth nonfiction book. Wendy is a fellow of the Royal Literary Fund. Sheila O Reilly Owner, Dulwich Books Sheila was born in Dublin and quickly fell in love with books, spending Saturday mornings at her local library in Terenure. Sheila has owned Dulwich Books in South London for 11 years and has been working in the book industry for 30 years. In May 2014, Dulwich Books was voted the best Independent Bookshop in the UK & Ireland by the book industry, having won the London region for the previous three years. She is an avid reader but when not reading, Sheila enjoys tennis, golf and holidaying in France.
POETRY AWARD Anna Dreda Independent Bookseller and Founder, Wenlock Poetry Festival Anna Dreda has been a bookseller for 30 years, 23 of those at Wenlock Books, of which she took ownership in 2003. This year, Wenlock Books and Fairacre Press jointly published the Wenlock Poetry Festival Anthology 2014. In 2009, Anna founded the Wenlock Poetry Festival with the support of Carol Ann Duffy, Poet Laureate; Founding Patron Gillian Clarke, National Poet of Wales; and Andrew Motion, former Poet Laureate. The festival, first held in 2010, has been an annual event ever since and is now recognised both locally and nationally as one of the leading Poetry Festivals in the UK. Charlotte Runcie Poet and Arts Journalist Charlotte Runcie is an arts journalist for the Daily Telegraph. She writes about all kinds of arts and entertainment, but particularly poetry. She read English at Queens' College, Cambridge, and her own poems are published by tall-lighthouse. As a teenager she was a Foyle Young Poet of the Year and winner of the Christopher Tower Poetry Prize, and her work has appeared in anthologies Best British Poems, Best Scottish Poems and the Salt Book of Younger Poets. Owen Sheers Poet and Author Owen Sheers has written two collections of poetry, The Blue Book and Skirrid Hill, which won a Somerset Maugham award. His verse drama Pink Mist won Wales Book of the Year and the Hay Festival Poetry Medal. His non-fiction includes The Dust Diaries and Calon: A Journey to the Heart of Welsh Rugby. His first novel Resistance has been translated into ten languages and was made into a film in 2011. His plays include The Passion, The Two Worlds of Charlie F. and Mametz. Owen wrote and presented BBC Four's A Poet's Guide to Britain. He has been a NYPL Cullman Fellow, Writer-in-Residence for the Wordsworth Trust and Artist in Residence for the Welsh Rugby Union. His second novel, I Saw a Man, will be published by Faber in 2015.
CHILDREN S BOOK AWARD Lorna Bradbury Deputy Literary Editor, Daily Telegraph Lorna Bradbury is Deputy Literary Editor of the Daily Telegraph, and writes a column on children's books. She has been a journalist for 15 years. She has an MA in English Literature from King's College, London. Married with three children, she lives in London. Jake Hope Freelance Reading Development and Children s Books Consultant Jake Hope is a freelance children's book consultant. He previously worked as reading development manager for Lancashire and coordinated the Lancashire Book of the Year Award. He has developed a range of large-scale reading development promotions for children and young people including the UK s first 'County Read' scheme, based around 'The Spook's Apprentice', and creating and commissioning the illustration of an innovative children's reading club with illustrator Mei Matsuoka. Jake regularly reviews and commentates on children s books and produces an online family reading magazine called The Woodlander. Jonathan Stroud Author Jonathan Stroud is an author who writes for children and young adults. He is the author of the bestselling Bartimaeus sequence, which is published in 36 languages and won the 2006 Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Children's Literature, the 2006 Corinne Award, Germany, and the 2007 Grand Prix de l'imaginaire. His new series, Lockwood & Co, was launched in 2013 to critical acclaim and won four literary awards with a further seven shortlistings. Jonathan lives in Hertfordshire with his wife and two children.