Okojie, Mackie and Minchin to judge Women’s Prize for Fiction 2023

Broadcaster and author Louise Minchin will chair the Women’s Prize for Fiction for 2023, with fellow judges including novelists Rachel Joyce and Irenosen Okojie, MP Tulip Siddiq and writer and journalist Bella Mackie.

Minchin was a presenter on BBC Breakfast for 20 years and the main news anchor on the BBC News Channel and the BBC’s One O’clock News. Alongside being a TV presenter she is also a writer. Her first book Dare to Tri (Bloomsbury) charted her journey from the Breakfast sofa to representing the Great Britain Triathlon team in her age group at World and European Championships. Her second book, Fearless, will be published by Bloomsbury in 2023.

“The Women’s Prize for Fiction is a hugely exciting and important landmark in the annual cultural calendar,” she said. “To be chairing the 2023 prize is therefore a great honour for me. I can’t wait to delve into the rich and varied novels that are on offer, and, alongside my fellow judges, help to celebrate women’s stories, sharing them with readers worldwide.”

Her fellow panelists include Joyce, whose books have sold more than five million copies worldwide and been translated into 36 languages, along with Mackie, a Vogue columnist and bestselling author of How to Kill your Family (HarperCollins) and Siddiq, Hampstead and Kilburn MP and shadow economic secretary to the Treasury. 

Panel member Okojie is known for her novel Butterfly Fish, and short-story collections Speak Gigantular and Nudibranch (all published by Jacaranda Books), which have won and been nominated for multiple awards. Her journalism has been featured in the New York Times, Observer, Guardian and Huffington Post and she is a contributing editor for the White Review. 

The longlist will be announced on 7th March, followed by the shortlist on 26th April 2023. The winner’s announcement ceremony will take place on 14th June 2023.

The annual prize is awarded for the best full-length novel of the year written in English and published in the United Kingdom between 1st April 2022 and 31st March 2023. 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 2022 winner was Ruth Ozeki’s The Book of Form and Emptiness (Canongate).