Announcing the Rathbones Folio Prize 2022 Judges

Tessa Hadley

Rachel Long

William Atkins

The award-winning author of novels, short stories and non-fiction Tessa Hadley; the Costa Prize and Rathbones Folio Prize-shortlisted poet Rachel Long; and the prize-winning non-fiction writer William Atkins have been announced as judges for the 2022 Rathbones Folio Prize.

Tessa Hadley is the author of seven highly praised novels Accidents in the Home, which was longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award, Everything Will Be All Right, The Master Bedroom,
The London Train, Clever Girl, The Past, Late in the Day and three collections of stories, Sunstroke, Married Love, and Bad Dreams. She won a Windham-Campbell prize for Fiction in 2016, The Past won the Hawthornden Prize for 2016, and Bad Dreams won the 2018 Edge Hill Short Story Prize. Her stories appear regularly in the New Yorker. Her novel Free Love will be published in 2022.

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, and the Jhalak Prize. She is the founder of Octavia Poetry Collective for women of colour, housed at the Southbank Centre, in London.

William Atkins is the author of The Immeasurable World: A Desert Journey, which won the Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year award. He is a contributor to the Guardian, the New York Times, Harper’s and Granta, where he is also a guest editor. His book Exiles: Three Island Journeys will be published by Faber in 2022. He lives in Suffolk.

Introducing the New Mentors for the Rathbones Folio Mentorship Programme

Caleb Azumah Nelson, Chloe Aridjis, Fiona Benson, Stephanie Cross, Will Eaves, and Will Harris are announced as the 2021-2022 Rathbones Folio Mentorship Mentors. This year the programme has expanded from 4 to 6 pairings. The scheme connects outstanding students from disadvantaged backgrounds with a member of The Folio Academy, for one-to-one creative writing tutoring over the course of a year.

British-Ghanaian writer and photographer Caleb Azumah Nelson, author of the acclaimed debut OPEN WATER, published earlier this year.

Mexican American, London-based writer Chloe Aridjis, author of three novels, Book of Clouds, which won the Prix du Premier Roman Etranger in France, Asunder, set in London’s National Gallery, and Sea Monsters, which was awarded the 2020 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.

Poet Fiona Benson, author of, among other collections, Vertigo & Ghost, which was shortlisted for the 2019 Rathbones Folio Prize and won both the Roehampton Poetry Prize and the Forward Prize for Best Collection.

Stephanie Cross, a Sunday Times top 10 bestselling ghostwriter, freelance editor, and fiction reviewer.

Will Eaves, who is the author of five novels, including Murmur, and two collections of poems, previously Arts Editor of the Times Literary Supplement, and now teaches writing at the University of Warwick.

Writer Will Harris whose poetry debut RENDANG (2020), published by Granta in the UK and Wesleyan University Press in the US, was a Poetry Book Society Choice, shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize and won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection.

Rathbones Folio Mentorships Showcase

This special event presents readings from this year’s cohort of Rathbones Folio mentees: talented First Story students who have experienced a unique, one-to-one creative writing mentorship over the course of a school year. Each mentee, Frankie, Katie, Priya and Soumya, are introduced by their mentors – Raymond Antrobus, Paul Farley, Rachel Long and Kathryn Maris – before giving a reading from the work that they have produced across the year.

The Prize

The Rathbones Folio Prize is open to all works of literature written in English and published in the UK. All genres and all forms of literature are eligible, except work written primarily for children. The format of first publication may be print or digital. The Prize will be awarded for books published in the previous calendar year. Click here to read the constitution.

What a privilege it has been to judge the Rathbones Folio Prize and to get to the heart of nearly ninety books. The more I read, the more important it became for books chosen for each stage to challenge literary forms and norms.

Our Sponsor

We’re delighted to hold an expanded partnership with our sponsors Rathbones Investment Management, which secures the future of the Prize, Mentorships and Sessions until at least 2023. The sponsorship by Rathbones enables us to step up our charitable objectives, while also increasing the value of the Prize, with the winner set to receive a cheque for £30,000.

The Folio Academy

The Folio Academy, an international group of people, primarily writers and critics, are immersed in the world of books. The Academy plays a decisive role in selecting titles to be considered for the Rathbones Folio Prize shortlist, and each year the judges will be drawn from its number. The mentors who lead each year’s Rathbones Folio Mentorships will also come from the Academy.

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