Owusu to chair Desmond Elliott Prize judging panel

Writer and poet Derek Owusu is to chair the judging panel for the National Centre for Writing’s (NCW) £10,000 Desmond Elliott Prize for debut novels. 

Owusu, who won the prize in 2020 with That Reminds Me (Merky Books), will be joined by journalist and author Symeon Brown and Cheltenham Literature Festival’s programme and commissioning manager Lyndsey Fineran. 

Owusu’s second solo work, Losing The Plot, will be published in 2022 by Canongate Books. He was also one of the founding members of the Black Writers Guild, formed due to a lack of representation and the inequalities that exist within mainstream UK publishing. 

“It’s an honour to judge any prize but it’s even more special to work with a prize that did so much for my career and continues to do so for others," he said, "and I’m very happy I can be a part of that. So I’m really looking forward to reading so many incredible books.”

The prize seeks to reward the author of the best debut novel published in the last 12 months. It is run by the NCW as the flagship in its Early Career Awards portfolio, which also includes the UEA New Forms Award and the Laura Kinsella Fellowship. 

The UEA New Forms Award, worth £4,000 to the winner, champions an "innovative and daring" new voice in fiction. It is awarded to a writer at the beginning of their career whose work might collaborate with other art-forms or in site-specific or site-responsive ways, experiment with forms of performance or print, and challenge traditional form or inhabit a digital space.

Also worth £4,000, the Laura Kinsella Fellowship was created to support writers experiencing limiting circumstances or whose voices are underrepresented in mainstream literary fiction. It is awarded to one early career writer of literary fiction.

Winners of all three prizes will benefit from the resources of the National Centre for Writing’s Early Career Awards programme, co-funded by Arts Council England. Each writer will receive a tailored package of further support including residency opportunities, mentoring and industry insight.

NCW chief executive Chris Gribble said: “We’re delighted and proud to have Derek, Lyndsey and Symeon join us as judges for the 2022 Desmond Elliott Prize. All three are deeply connected to the best new writing, most exciting new writers and the most urgent stories being created today and will do a brilliant job in guiding the prize this year. 

"The last couple of years has seen a boom in reading and a reading public more confident and open than ever before to outstanding new work; the Desmond Elliott Prize longlist offers an exhilarating snapshot of the best on offer this year and we’re very excited to make a start!”

The Desmond Elliott Prize longlist will be announced on 21st April and the shortlist will be announced on 7th June. The winners of all three prizes will be revealed on 1st July.