Kirkus announced the jurors for the 2024 Kirkus Prize, given each year in the categories of fiction, nonfiction, and young readers’ literature. The literary prizes, which come with a $50,000 cash award in each category, are some of the richest of their kind in the world.
Serving as fiction jurors for this year’s award are bookseller Christine Bollow, the co-owner and director of programs for Loyalty Bookstores in Washington, D.C., and Silver Spring, Maryland; and Jeffrey Burke, a Kirkus reviewer and former editor at Harper’s magazine, the Wall Street Journal, Vanity Fair, and Bloomberg News.
The nonfiction jurors are journalist, author, and illustrator Hannah Bae, whose work has appeared in the Asian American Writers’ Workshop’s the Margins, Catapult, the Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the anthologies Our Red Book and (Don’t) Call Me Crazy; and Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Mary Ann Gwinn, whose reviews have appeared in publications including Kirkus Reviews, the Los Angeles Times, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and the Seattle Times.
The young readers’ literature jury is composed of Kirkus reviewers Christopher A. Biss-Brown, curator of the Children’s Literature Research Collection at the Free Library of Philadelphia; and Michelle H. Martin, the Beverly Cleary Endowed Professor in Children and Youth Services in the Information School at the University of Washington.
The Kirkus Prize is in its 11th year. All books which receive a Kirkus star during the 12-month eligibility period are considered for the prize. Past winners include Lily King for Euphoria, Jack E. Davis for The Gulf, Christina Soontornvat for All Thirteen, and James McBride for The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store.
The finalists for the prize will be announced in late summer. Winners will be revealed at a ceremony at the Tribeca Rooftop in New York on Oct. 16.
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
