The panel of judges for the 2023 Booker Prize has been revealed, with Canadian novelist Esi Edugyan set to chair the jury for the prestigious British literary award for fiction.
Edugyan has been a finalist for the Booker Prize twice, in 2011 for Half-Blood Blues, and in 2018 for Washington Black. Both novels won the Giller Prize, Canada’s best-known literary award.
Joining her on the panel will be Bridgerton actor Adjoa Andoh, poet Mary Jean Chan, Columbia University English professor James Shapiro, and comedian and Peep Show actor Robert Webb.
In a statement, Edugyan said that the Booker Prize “encourages us to take sight of ourselves in the lives of others.”
“I’m deeply excited for the chance to immerse myself in great storytelling, in its enduring ability to shock, thrill, devastate, and console,” she said. “I am especially delighted to get to do so alongside this brilliant and accomplished panel of judges, whose breadth of experience, viewpoints and vocations will no doubt make for rich conversation.”
The Booker Prize Foundation also announced that publishers are now invited to enter books for consideration for the award. The prize is open to “long-form fiction written in English and published in the UK and Ireland, irrespective of the nationality or citizenship of the author.”
The longlist for the 2023 award will be announced next July, with the shortlist coming in September, and the winner revealed at a ceremony in October.
Michael Schaub, a journalist and regular contributor to NPR, lives near Austin, Texas.
