Journalist Mary Ann Sieghart is to chair the judging panel for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2022.
She will be joined on the panel by writers Dorothy Koomson, Anita Sethi, Pandora Sykes and Lorraine Candy.
The award, which organisers say “champions excellence, originality and accessibility in women’s writing”, comes with £30,000 prize money.
We are so excited to reveal our incredible 2022 #WomensPrize judging panel 🎉
Chair Mary Ann Sieghart, is joined by judges @lorrainecandy, @DorothyKoomson, @anitasethi and Pandora Sykes.
Meet this year's judges: https://t.co/me7mhLTiES pic.twitter.com/D987GdvteG
— Women's Prize (@WomensPrize) November 9, 2021
Sieghart said: “It’s a great honour to be chosen to chair the judging for the Women’s Prize for Fiction.
“There are so many fabulous contemporary female writers who deserve to be better read.
“I hope that our longlist, shortlist and final winner will inspire new readers, male and female, to sample the extraordinary variety of fiction created by women today.”
The Women’s Prize for Fiction 2022 will be awarded to the best full-length novel of the year written in English and published in the UK between April 1 2021 and March 31 2022.
The longlist for the award will be published in March followed by the shortlist in April.
The winner of the award will then be unveiled on June 15.
Last year’s award was won by Susanna Clarke’s novel Piranesi.