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Poet and teacher Kate Clanchy and the best-selling author Victoria Hislop will join Andrew Holgate to judge the Sunday Times/University of Warwick Young Writer of the Year Award this year.
Administered by the Society of Authors, the prize rewards the best work of fiction, non-fiction or poetry by a British or Irish author aged between 18 and 35.
Clanchy’s recently published book, Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me (Picador), explored her 30-year career in teaching. She has been recognised by various prizes and last year was awarded an MBE for services to literature. She said of her judging duties: "This prize gives me the extraordinary privilege of reading through a year’s worth of novels, poetry and non-fiction by that younger generation, re-seeing the world through their eyes, and then rewarding some of them with the Young Writer of the Year Award.”
Joining her on the panel will be Hislop whose new novel, Those Who Are Loved (Headline), is set against the backdrop of the German occupation of Greece. Her books have been translated into more than 35 languages and have been bestsellers in China, Greece, France, Israel, Norway and the UK.
Kate Clanchy and Victoria Hislop
Fellow judge Holgate has been the literary editor of the Sunday Times for ten years, and before that was the deputy literary editor for nine. He has worked in bookselling, publishing and literary journalism, and has judged many other prizes, including the Samuel Johnson Award and the Somerset Maugham.
The University of Warwick became a title partner of the award earlier this year after first sponsoring it in 2017. Literary agency Peters Fraser + Dunlop had been a title partner. The agency's c.e.o. Caroline Michel is staying on to becoming its first patron.
Submissions for the 2019 prize will close on 15th June. To qualify for the prize, books, which can either be published or self-published, between 3rd June 2018 and 8th June 2019. The 2019 shortlist will be announced on 3rd November, the winner crowned on 5th December.
Last year's award went to travel author Adam Weymouth for Kings of the Yukon (Particular Books). The year before Sally Rooney won for Conversations with Friends (Faber) with Max Porter taking the prize for Grief is the Thing with Feathers (Faber) in 2016.