The £40,000 book prize formerly known as the Literature Prize has announced its panel of judges. This year’s Folio Prize will be chaired by the poet and critic Lavinia Greenlaw, who has said that she is “honoured and delighted to be chairing the jury,” adding that “fiction is finding new forms and writers are resisting all kinds of borders.”
Greenlaw will be joined by fellow writers and critics Pankaj Mishra, Sarah Hall, Name Le and Michael Chabon, who were drawn at random from the prize’s Oscars-style Academy of one hundred “ideal first readers”. Between them they represent Australia (and Vietnam), India, America and the United Kingdom. The Prize is Anglo-centric by definition, being the only literary competition which seeks out English-language fiction written anywhere in the world.
Nam Le, the Australian short story writer and author of Frank O’Connor longlisted collection The Boat (2008), was overjoyed with his selection in the ballot: “I won the lottery!” he said. “I’m looking forward to it: I like the idea of making space in the award ecology for prizes like the Folio – where writers read, nominate and honour other writers.”
The Folio Prize is the most ambitious literary prize germinating in that ecology right now. It has widened the Booker’s remit, and in terms of numbers alone – its academicians, judges, committees of advisors and managers from across publishing and the arts – it cannot fail to make a noise when the initial shortlist is unveiled in February next year. The prize’s sponsor, The Folio Society, is a publisher whose mission is to create firm, illustrated editions of classic works of fiction, biography, science and philosophy. The partnership is in itself a statement of the organisers’ hopes from the prize’s longevity.
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