Shafak and Levy among Goldsmiths Prize judges

Leading Turkish novelist Elif Shafak and novelist and poet Deborah Levy are among those judging the 2018 Goldsmiths Prize.

Veteran literary critic Nicholas Lezard, and writer, research professor of Creative Writing at Goldsmiths, and chair of judges, Adam Mars-Jones will complete the judging panel.

The £10,000 Goldsmiths Prize rewards fiction at its "most novel".

Mars-Jones said: “I'm delighted to be chairing the panel of judges in the sixth year of the prize. I look forward to a season of extreme reading."

The award will be open for submissions on 26th January and close on 23rd March. A six-book shortlis will be announced on 14th November and the winner will be announced at a ceremony in London on the 14th November.

Only works by authors from the UK and Republic of Ireland are eligible for the Goldsmiths Prize, launched in association with the New Statesman in 2013.

Last year Nicola Barker won the gong with H(A)PPY (William Heinemann), a novel presented like an illuminated manuscript for the digital age, which was described as “a structural marvel to hold in the mind and in the hands”.

in 2013, Eimear McBride was the first winner of the £10,000 prize for her work A Girl Is A Half-formed Thing (Faber/Galley Beggar). Subsequent winners were Ali Smith in 2014 for How to Be Both (Penguin), Kevin Barry in 2015 for Beatlebone (Canongate), and Mike McCormack in 2016 for Solar Bones (Tramp Press).