Chang-rae Lee, Kiese Laymon, and Nicola Yoon are among the judges for this year’s Kirkus Prize, one of the richest literary awards in the world.
Kirkus announced the nine judges—three each for fiction, nonfiction, and young readers’ literature—Tuesday morning. They’ll choose the winners of the annual prizes, each of which comes with a $50,000 cash prize.
Novelist Lee (The Surrendered) will be a judge in the fiction category along with journalist Amy Reiter and Word Up Community Bookshop/Librería Comunitaria founder Veronica Santiago Liu.
The nonfiction judging panel consists of author Laymon (Heavy), Kirkus reviewer Erika Rohrbach, and bookseller Nick Buzanski.
And novelist Yoon (The Sun Is Also a Star) will be one of the young readers’ literature judges with author Kyle Lukoff (When Aidan Became a Brother) and librarian Roxanne Hsu Feldman.
The Kirkus Prize was created in 2014, with Lily King’s Euphoria, Roz Chast’s Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?, and Kate Samworth’s Aviary Wonders Inc.: Spring Catalog and Instruction Manual all taking home the inaugural awards. Books that have received starred reviews from Kirkus are eligible for the awards.
Other books to receive the Kirkus Prize have included Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life, Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me, and Jason Reynolds’ As Brave as You.
Shortlists of six books in each category will be announced on Sept. 9, with the winners revealed at an online ceremony on Nov. 5.
Michael Schaub is a Texas-based journalist and regular contributor to NPR.
