Jury
Fiction
Alfonzo Sieveking
Founder, The Common Press
Alfonzo Sieveking is an award-winning bookshop manager who most recently helped establish The Common Press Bookshop in Shoreditch, which champions queer and intersectional literature from marginalised writers. He also founded and ran a small literary press called Ampersand Publishing.
Aliya Gulamani
Commissioning Editor & Editorial Lead, Unbound
Ansa Khan Khattak
Senior Commissioning Editor, Cornerstone
Ansa Khan Khattak currently works at Hutchinson Heinemann, known for its bestsellers, prize winners, ground-breaking voices and original stories. She has published Pulitzer Prize-winning author Paul Harding and acquired books by Rebecca K Reilly, Akutagawa Prize-winner Junko Takase.
Dr Marl’ene Edwin
Caribbean and Diaspora Studies, Goldsmiths
Dr. Marl’ene Edwin is Deputy Director at the Centre for Caribbean and Diaspora Studies. Senior Fellow of the HEA and Churchill Fellow, her research interests include Caribbean Creole Languages and Oral Literature. She is Programme Convenor for the world’s first MA in Black British Literature and author of Archiving Creole Voices (2025).
Naomi Booth
Author
Naomi Booth is a writer and academic. Her first work of fiction The Lost Art of Sinking was published in 2015 and it won the Saboteur Award for Best Novella. Her novel Exit Management was named a Guardian Best Fiction Book of 2020, whilst the story Sour Hall was adapted into an Audible drama series in 2021.
Richard Price
Poetry and Fiction Writer
Richard Price’s poetry comprises Lucky Day, Moon for Sale, and Late Gifts. Writing as R. J. Price, his fiction includes The Island and A Boy in Summer. He has a PhD on Neil M. Gunn’s novels and was most recently Head of Contemporary British Collections at the British Library before becoming a full-time writer.
Maxine Davies
Production Editor, Mslexia
Maxine Davies is the production editor at Mslexia magazine, and is also involved with the running of the Mslexia Fiction and Poetry competitions. She’s got a degree in History and an MA in Modern and Contemporary Literature. In 2021 she was named as one of the Printing Charity’s Rising Stars.
Lucy Binnersley
Associate Editor, The London Magazine
Lucy Binnersley is a British-born editor, currently Associate Editor at The London Magazine after serving as Managing Editor from 2016-2023. With experience editing both emerging and established authors, she specializes in guiding manuscripts from draft to publication. She has also worked at Granta.
Dean Gessie
Author, Poet, Educator
Multi-award winning Dean Gessie won the Creators of Justice Literary Award in New York, and was twice selected for The Best 64 Poets by Black Mountain Press. His award winning publications include Anthropocene and goat song, short story and poetry collections from UnCollected Press, Maryland.
Poetry
Chris McCabe
Writer and Librarian
Chris McCabe works across poetry, fiction, non-fiction, drama and visual art, that have been shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award and Republic of Consciousness Prize. His collection, The Triumph of Cancer, is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. He is Librarian at the National Poetry Library.
Astra Papachristodoulou
Poet and Associate Tutor, University of Greenwich
Astra Papachristodoulou works at The Poetry Society’s Poetry Review and she’s an Associate Tutor in Creative Writing at the University of Greenwich. She won the Pebeo Mixed Media Art Prize in 2016, and her visual poetry has been showcased across the UK, including the National Poetry Library, London.
Naush Sabah
Writer, Editor & Critic
Naush Sabah is a writer, editor, critic and educator. In 2019, she co-founded Poetry Birmingham Literary Journal where she is Editor and Publishing Director. Her writing has appeared in The Poetry Review and the TLS. She was shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature’s 2021 Sky Arts Writers Award.
Degna Stone
Poet and Editor
Degna Stone is an award-winning poet and poetry editor. They are co-founder and former Managing Editor of Butcher’s Dog poetry magazine, a Contributing Editor at The Rialto, and an associate artist with The Poetry Exchange. Currently, Degna is Project Manager for The Rebecca Swift Foundation.
Nasser Hussain
Author, Senior Lecturer in Literature
Nasser Hussain is a Lecturer in Literature and Creative Writing at Leeds Beckett University. His first book, Boldface was published in 2014. He holds a PhD in English from the University of York, an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Windsor and a BA in English from Queen’s University.