Jawando, Domingo and Saul to judge 2024 Jhalak Prizes

The Jhalak Prize for British or British-resident writers of colour has announced the judges for its two £1,000 awards and opened submissions for the 2024 prizes.

The Jhalak Prize will be judged by authors Anni Domingo, Stella Oni and Denise Saul in 2024, while authors Danielle Jawando, J P Rose and Rashmi Sirdeshpande will be judging the Jhalak Children’s & Young Adult Prize. 

Both prizes will open for submissions between 13th September 2023 and 8th December 2023 for books published between 1st January 2023 and 31st December 2023. The books must have been published in the UK in that year and originally published in English. The author of the work must have been resident in the UK for a minimum of the calendar year in which the book is eligible.

The longlists will be announced on 14th March 2024 with the shortlists following on 11th April 2024. The winners of both prizes will be announced at the British Library in May 2024 and each winner will receive a £1,000 cash prize, an original artwork by an artist of colour and a two-year complimentary membership to The London Library, the UK’s largest independent library.

Entries may include fiction, non-fiction, short stories, graphic novels, poetry and all other genres. The Jhalak Children’s and YA Prize accepts books for children, teens and young adults including picture books, chapter books, graphic novels, poetry, non-fiction, and all other genres by writers of colour and aimed at young readers. The prizes are also open to self-published writers.

Prize director Sunny Singh said: "We are excited about our eighth year. We expect the submissions to be stronger than ever before and can’t wait to celebrate them. Both our judging panels exemplify literary excellence, talent, empathy as well as courage and resilience. We are delighted to welcome our judges’ extraordinary experience and insight and are sure they will enjoy the reading that comes their way."

The Jhalak Prize will continue its partnership with National Book Tokens for the fourth year. The partnership, launched in 2021 to help increase awareness and support among bookshops for Jhalak titles, saw over 100 bookshops across the country supporting the 2024 prize in-store and online.

The Jhalak Prize will also continue its partnership with The London Library, offering shortlisted and winning authors complimentary membership with full access to the library’s collection of over a million books and to its online resources. The London Library will also host a celebration of the prize for all the shortlisted authors of the Jhalak Prize and Jhalak Children’s & YA Prize.

Travis Alabanza won the Jhalak Prize in 2023 for None of the Above (Canongate), while the winner of the inaugural Jhalak Children’s & Young Adult Prize in 2023 was Danielle Jawando for When Our Worlds Collided (Simon & Schuster Children’s UK).