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Michael Wood, Ellah Allfrey, John Burnside, Sam Leith and Frances Osborne will judge the 2015 Man Booker Prize for Fiction.
Wood, who is Professor Emeritus of English and Comparative Literature at Princeton, will chair the judges. Allfrey is a journalist and deputy chair of the Council of the Caine Prize, poet Burnside is a winner of the T S Eliot Prize and the Forward Poetry Prize, Leith is an author and literary editor at the Spectator, while Osborne is an author and biographer.
Wood said on behalf of the judging panel: “Talking about novels is almost as much fun as reading them, and we're all greatly looking forward to this double pleasure. It's a privilege to be a member of this very distinguished panel and to be part of the deliberations for the award of the Man Booker Prize, surely the most exciting and the most closely followed literary event in the English-speaking world. I believe some of the books are already waiting for us.”
The 2015 judging panel will be looking for the best novel of the year, selected from entries published in the UK between 1st October 2014 and 30th September 2015. The judges will read submissions both in hard copy and using iPad Airs, donated by Apple.
Following a change in 2014, the prize is now open to writers of any nationality, published in the UK and originally written in English. Last year, 44 of the 154 books submitted were by authors who were eligible under the new rule changes, and the book was won by Australian Richard Flanagan for The Narrow Road to the Deep North.
The ‘Man Booker Dozen’ of 12 or 13 books will be announced in August 2015 and the shortlist of six books in early September 2015. The winner of the 2015 Man Booker Prize for Fiction will be announced on 13th October 2015, at an awards ceremony at London’s Guildhall, broadcast live by the BBC.