Dorothy Koomson and Pandora Sykes help judge 2022 Women's Prize

Author and journalist Mary Ann Sieghart will chair the judging panel for the Women’s Prize for Fiction for 2022, with fellow judges including writers Dorothy Koomson, Anita Sethi, Pandora Sykes and Lorraine Candy. 

Sieghart is a journalist, broadcaster and author of The Authority Gap (Doubleday). She worked at the Times for almost 20 years as well as for various other newspapers. “It’s a great honour to be chosen to chair the judging for the Women’s Prize for Fiction,” Sieghart said.

“There are so many fabulous contemporary female writers who deserve to be better read. I hope that our longlist, shortlist and final winner will inspire new readers, male and female, to sample the extraordinary variety of fiction created by women today."  

Her fellow panelists include Koomson—whose books have sold in 30 languages; and who was recently named on the 2021 Powerlist as one of the most influential Black people in Britain—along with journalist and author Sethi, whose debut I Belong Here (Bloomsbury) charted her journey across northern Britain following a racist attack, and inspired a foundation of the same name.

Panel member Sykes is known for her journalism and presenting of “The High Low” podcast with Dolly Alderton, as well as her essay collection How Do We Know We’re Doing it Right? (Hutchinson). Candy, a journalist and author who was formerly editor-in-chief of Cosmo and Elle, will also help whittle down the entries. 

The Women’s Prize for Fiction will be awarded for the best full-length novel of the year written in English and published in the United Kingdom between 1st April 2021 and 31st March 2022. The award champions excellence, originality and accessibility in women’s writing, and the winner receives a cheque for £30,000, anonymously endowed, along with a limited-edition bronze statuette known as the "Bessie", created and donated by the artist Grizel Niven.  

The 2021 winner of the Women’s Prize was Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi (Bloomsbury).