Twice-shortlisted Edugyan announced as chair of judges for 2023 Booker Prize

Novelist Esi Edugyan has been announced as the chair of judges for the 2023 Booker Prize alongside actor Robert Webb and poet, lecturer and critic Mary Jean Chan.

They will be joined on the panel by actor, writer and director Adjoa Andoh and Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, James Shapiro.

Gaby Wood, director of the Booker Prize Foundation, said: “I am hugely looking forward to working with this lively and lovely panel of readers. They bring to the task of discovering next year’s best fiction a strikingly wide range of knowledge and a shared enthusiasm for storytelling in all its forms.

“Esi Edugyan described herself, in her latest book of essays, as ‘a storyteller with an interest in overlooked narratives’. That’s clear from her two Booker-shortlisted novels, Washington Black and Half Blood Blues (Serpent’s Tail), which, though very different from each other, are both magnificent entertainments and subtle acts of reimagining. I have no doubt that her astuteness and calm will bring out the very best in this glorious group."

Edugyan said: “Stendhal wrote: ‘A novel is a mirror carried along a high road’. Year after year the Booker Prize encourages us to take sight of ourselves in the lives of others, to slip for the length of a story into different skins, to grapple with unfamiliar worlds that allow us to see our own afresh. I’m deeply excited for the chance to immerse myself in great storytelling, in its enduring ability to shock, thrill, devastate, and console. I am especially delighted to get to do so alongside this brilliant and accomplished panel of judges, whose breadth of experience, viewpoints and vocations will no doubt make for rich conversation.”

A shortlist of 12 or 13 books will be announced in July 2023 with the shortlist of six books to follow in September. The winner of the £50,000 prize will be announced in late October. Publishers are invited to visit thebookerprizes.com/submissions for the 2023 rules and to enter their titles. Deadlines are staggered between 30th January and 5th June 2023. 

The 2022 winner was Shehan Karunatilaka’s The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida (Sort Of Books).