Judges are announced for DylanThomas Prize
THE judges for this year’s International Dylan Thomas Prize have been announced.
Novelists, playwrights, writers, a poet and a festival director make up the judging panel for what is one of the world’s most prestigious prizes for young writers.
The £30,000 prize, run in partnership with Swansea University, opened for entries on September 4, 2017.
It is awarded to the best eligible published literary work in English, written by an author aged 39 or under.
Launched in 2006, it is aimed at encouraging raw creative talent worldwide.
Past winners have come from Wales, England, the USA, Vietnam and Australia, and include writer Rachel Trezise, who is one of this year’s judges. The winner will be announced on May 10.
The other judges are writer, publisher and festival director Namita Gokhale; poet, translator and scholar Kurt Heinzelman; playwright, director and award-winning writer Paul McVeigh; and panel chairman Dai Smith, a historian and writer on Welsh arts and culture at Swansea University.
Professor Smith said: “The panel of judges assembled for 2018 under my chairmanship bring to their formidable task experience of Wales and the world, of the practice of creative writing in prose and poetry, of drama and communication, of readers’ expectations and writers’ risktaking, and, of course, of the multifariousness of Dylan himself.
“We have a hard act to follow after last year’s panel chose Fiona McFarlane’s book of short stories, The High Places.”