Natasha Brown and Ali Smith to judge 10th Goldsmiths Prize

Authors Ali Smith and Natasha Brown will judge the 10th Goldsmiths Prize, joined by the New Statesman’s Tom Gatti and prize founder Dr Tim Parnell.

Parnell, who is the Goldsmiths Prize literary director and a senior English lecturer author, will be chair of the judges. He is joined by Smith, who won the Goldsmiths Prize, the Bailey’s Women’s Prize for Fiction, the Folio Prize and the Costa Novel Award in 2014 for How To Be Both (Hamish Hamilton). Her seasonal quartet of novels responding to world-turning moments in real time was completed in 2020 with the publication of Summer (Hamish Hamilton). It won the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction 2021 and the inaugural Pleasure of Reading award.  

Smith said: “The Goldsmiths Prize goes direct to the roots of new life in contemporary fiction every time, which is why it’s the most vital and radical prize in the literary year.”   

Fellow panel member Brown’s debut novel Assembly (Hamish Hamilton) was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize in 2021 and won the Foyles Fiction Book of the Year. Brown, who worked in financial services for 10 years, developed Assembly after receiving a 2019 London Writers Award for literary fiction.  

Gatti is executive editor for culture, books and ideas at the New Statesman. He is the editor of Long Players: Writers on the Albums That Shaped Them (Bloomsbury) and previously judged the Goldsmiths Prize in 2014.   

Parnell said: “Since we launched in 2013, I sense a positive change in attitudes towards novelists who are not content to tread the same well-worn paths. We’ve celebrated some remarkable novels in that time and I’m looking forward to reading in search of other gems in this our tenth anniversary year.”  

Gatti added: “Ever since Eimear McBride won the first Goldsmiths Prize in 2013, three days into my new job at the New Statesman, I’ve been a follower and a fan as well as an associate and judge of an award that has celebrated most of my favourite novels of the past decade. It’s a thrill and a privilege to join the judging panel again for the prize’s 10th year.”  

Launched by Goldsmiths, University of London, in 2013 in association with the New Statesman, the annual £10,000 prize recognises writing that breaks the mould, opens up new possibilities for the novel form, and embodies the spirit of invention.   

This year’s Goldsmiths Prize opens for submissions on 28th January. The shortlist is due to be announced on 5th October and the winner on 9th November. Authors of any nationality are eligible for the Goldsmiths Prize provided they have been resident in the UK or Ireland for a minimum of three years and their submitted novel has been published there.