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Authors Ian Rankin, Sarah Perry and Max Porter will judge the 2020 Deborah Rogers Foundation (DRF) Writers Award, celebrating first-time writers.
The £10,000 award will be presented to a first-time writer whose submission demonstrates outstanding literary talent and who needs financial support to complete their work.
Rankin, internationally bestselling author of the Inspector Rebus and Detective Malcolm Fox novels, said he was “was honoured to be asked” to chair the judging panel. The Scottish crime writer will be joined by Porter, a former Granta editorial director and award-winning author of Grief is The Thing with Feathers as well as Perry, whose first novel After Me Comes the Flood, was longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award.
A literary agent all her professional life, Deborah Rogers set up her own agency in 1967, and 20 years later formed Rogers Coleridge & White with Gill Coleridge and Pat White. Her sudden death on 30th April 2014 sent a shockwave through the world of publishing. The DRF was set up in her memory to continue to seek out and support emerging talent in the publishing world.
DRF board member Coleridge said: “To have these three major writers readily agree to be judges is a significant indication of the increasing status of the DRF Writers Award. This award has already changed the lives of all the previous finalists and launched stellar literary careers so we are extremely proud to have these three authors as judges for the next one.”
A shortlist of three writers will be revealed in April 2020. The winner of the £10,000 prize will be announced in May 2020. The runners-up will each be awarded £1,000. Submissions opened on 1st June 2019 and will close on 31st October 2019. Full submission details here.
Deepa Anappara won last year's award for Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line, to be published by Chatto & Windus UK and Random House US in 2020. In 2016, Sharlene Teo won for her unpublished manuscript Ponti, before it was snapped up by Picador in a seven-way auction.