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 in May for books published in the previous calendar year.
2018 Judge Panel
Jim Crace
Jim Crace is the author of eleven books, including Continent, winner of the Whitbread First Novel Award and the Guardian Fiction Prize; Quarantine, Whitbread Novel of the Year and shortlisted for the Booker Prize; Being Dead, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award; and Harvest, shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and winner of the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and James Tait Black Memorial Prize. His next novel, The Melody, will be published by Picador in February 2018. He lives in Worcestershire.
Nikesh Shukla
Nikesh Shukla is the author of Coconut Unlimited, shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award, and the widely acclaimed Meatspace. He edited the essay collection The Good Immigrant, featuring British writers of colour discussing race and immigration in the UK and, building on its huge success, has just crowdfunded and launched a new quarterly literary magazine, The Good Journal, and an affiliated literary agency.
Kate Summerscale
Kate Summerscale is the author of The Queen of Whale Cay, winner of a Somerset Maugham award; The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize and two British Book Awards; Mrs Robinson’s Disgrace, a Sunday Times bestseller; and The Wicked Boy, winner of the Mystery Writers of America award for Best Fact Crime. She is a former literary editor of the Daily Telegraph and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. She lives in London.
The Selection Process
Each year, three or five members of the Academy will be invited to judge the Prize.
This year, judges will consider a total of 60 books, which will be nominated by the Academy.
The sole criterion for judgment will be excellence: to identify works of literature in which the subjects being explored achieve their most perfect and thrilling expression.
From these 60 titles a shortlist of eight will be selected by the judges. The winner will be announced at the annual Rathbones Folio Prize ceremony and presented with a cheque for £20,000.
Further information about the Prize can be found in the Rathbones Folio Prize Constitution.
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