The Booker Prize 2025: judges announced and submissions now open
The judges for the Booker Prize 2025 are revealed today, 10 December, 2024, as the prize opens for submissions from publishers
Critically acclaimed writer and 1993 Booker Prize winner Roddy Doyle chairs the judging panel and is joined by Booker Prize-longlisted novelist Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀; award-winning actor, producer and publisher Sarah Jessica Parker; writer, broadcaster and literary critic Chris Power; and New York Times bestselling and Booker Prize-longlisted author Kiley Reid.
About the prize
The Booker Prize is the world’s most significant award for a single work of fiction. It has rewarded and celebrated world-class talent for over fifty years, shaping the canon of 20th and 21st century literature.
This year’s judges are looking for the best work of long-form fiction by writers of any nationality, written in English and published in the UK and/or Ireland between 1 October 2024 and 30 September 2025.
The ‘Booker Dozen’ of 12 or 13 books will be announced next July, with the shortlist of six books to follow in September. The winner of the Booker Prize 2025 will be announced in November, with the winner receiving £50,000, as well as the £2,500 awarded to each of the six shortlisted authors.
Publishers are invited to submit their books here.
Iris, the Booker Prize trophy
© David Parry/Booker Prize FoundationThe Booker Prize 2025 judges
Roddy Doyle, Chair of the Booker Prize 2025 judges, comments:
‘For more than forty years, I’ve been writing novels, or editing novels, or thinking about the next novel. For longer still – since my mother taught me how to read – I’ve filled hours of every day with novels, reading them, re-reading them, just gazing at them. “His head was never out of the books” is two-thirds of my biography. So, to have licence to do little else but read the year’s best novels, to find the familiar in the unfamiliar, to examine the remarkable, unique things that great writers can do with the shared language, English – I can’t wait.
‘I’m looking forward to working with a great panel of judges. I’ve never been in a book club before, but I think I’m probably joining a good one.’
Roddy Doyle, Booker Prize 2025 judge
© Anthony WoodsGaby Wood, Chief Executive of the Booker Prize Foundation, adds:
‘The 2025 judges form a jury of creative peers like no other. We’ve never before had three Booker authors on the panel. Roddy, the first past Booker winner to chair the judges, has already brought generosity, wit and calm to the process, and I have no doubt that he will draw together this stellar crowd as they seek the best fiction of the year. Ayọ̀bámi and Kiley, both past longlistees and very different writers, are perfectly placed to identify a cohort following in their footsteps. I’ve long admired Chris’s acuity and taste, and have in recent months enjoyed sharing book recommendations with Sarah Jessica, who has passionately supported contemporary fiction for many years. I’m hugely looking forward to listening in.’
Gaby Wood
© Clara MoldenAbout the judges
Roddy Doyle (Chair) is the author of 13 novels, including The Commitments, The Snapper, Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, for which he won the Booker Prize in 1993, The Woman Who Walked Into Doors, and, most recently, The Woman Behind the Door. He has also written three collections of short stories, eight books for children, the ‘Two Pints’ series, and a memoir of his parents, Rory and Ita. He co-wrote The Second Half with Roy Keane, and Kellie, with Kellie Harrington.
He also co-wrote the screenplay for The Commitments and wrote the scripts for The Snapper and The Van. His most recent screen work was the script for Rosie, released in 2018. His four-part TV series, Family, was produced by the BBC in 1994. He has also written for the stage, including the book of The Commitments musical.
He is a co-founder of Fighting Words, which was set up to help and encourage children and young people throughout Ireland to write creatively.
Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀ is the author of the novels Stay with Me and A Spell of Good Things, which was longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2023.
Her novels have been translated into over 20 languages. Stay with Me was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, the Wellcome Book Prize and the Kwani? Manuscript Project and won the Prix Les Afriques and the 9mobile Prize for Literature. A Spell of Good Things was shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize and the Encore Award after being longlisted for the Booker.
Adébáyọ̀ is also the author of Provenance, which was staged as a multi-screen immersive installation co-produced in 2021 by Mutiny and the University of East Anglia. She studied at the Obafemi Awolowo University in Nigeria and the University of East Anglia, earning degrees in Literature and Creative Writing.
Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀, Booker Prize 2025 judge
© Emmanuel IdumaSarah Jessica Parker is an award-winning actor, producer, publisher and businesswoman who has won four Golden Globe Awards, three Screen Actors Guild Awards, and two Emmy Awards.
Parker next stars in the highly anticipated third season of HBO’s television series And Just Like That. The show is a revival of the critically acclaimed television series Sex and the City (1998-2004) in which Parker starred and served as an executive producer. Film credits include: L.A. Story, The Family Stone, State and Main, Mars Attacks!, Ed Wood, The First Wives Club, Miami Rhapsody, Honeymoon in Vegas, and Footloose.
Parker’s award-winning production company, Pretty Matches Productions, develops film and television projects across a wide variety of genres. Among them was HBO’s Divorce, in which Parker starred for three seasons and for which she was nominated for a Golden Globe. Parker has worked in the theatre since 1976, when she debuted on Broadway in The Innocents, directed by Harold Pinter. She recently starred opposite her husband Matthew Broderick in the revival of Neil Simon‘s comedy play, Plaza Suite, directed by Tony Award winner John Benjamin Hickey. Parker’s performance earned her a nomination for Best Actress at the 2024 Olivier Awards.
In June 2023, Parker launched SJP Lit, her own literary imprint in partnership with independent publisher Zando, publishing thought-provoking, big-hearted stories inclusive of international and underrepresented voices. Recent titles include They Dream in Gold by Mai Sennaar, Alina Grabowski’s Women and Children First, Elysha Chang’s A Quitter’s Paradise, and Coleman Hill, written by Kim Coleman Foote.
Prior to this, Parker served as Editorial Director of the literary imprint SJP for Hogarth, publishing the New York Times bestseller A Place For Us by Fatima Farheen Mirza, winner of the Desmond Elliott Prize; Golden Child by Claire Adam; and Dawn, the critically acclaimed story collection by the jailed Turkish politician and human rights lawyer Selahattin Demirtas. Parker has additionally served as Honorary Chair of the American Library Association’s online reading resource platform Central Book Club, and as a board member of the nonprofit organisation United for Libraries.
Parker served as a member of the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities during the Obama administration. She currently serves as a Vice-Chairman of the Board of Directors for the New York City Ballet and is an unstinting champion of contemporary literature.
Chris Power is the author of a novel, A Lonely Man, a Washington Post and New Statesman book of the year, and a short story collection, Mothers, which was longlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize and shortlisted for the Edge Hill Prize. His fiction has appeared in Granta, the Stinging Fly and the Dublin Review. He was a regular presenter of BBC Radio 4’s ‘Open Book’ from 2020 to 2024. His criticism has appeared in newspapers and magazines including the Guardian, the Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, the New York Times, the New Statesman, Fantastic Man and the London Review of Books.
He regularly chairs literary events and has taught writing in various capacities, including on the MA in Creative Writing at Goldsmiths, University of London. His judging experience includes the Frank O’Connor Prize, the BBC National Short Story Award, the Commonwealth Short Story Prize and the Goldsmiths Prize.
Kiley Reid was longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2020 for her first novel, Such a Fun Age. It was a New York Times bestseller, and a finalist for the New York Public Library’s 2020 Young Lions Fiction Award, the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award, the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work by a Debut Author, and the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award.
Her second novel, Come and Get It, was also a New York Times bestseller, a Good Morning America Book Club pick, and named a best book of 2024 by the New Yorker, NPR, ELLE, and New York Magazine’s Vulture.
Reid is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she was the recipient of the Truman Capote Fellowship. Her writing has been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Playboy, the Guardian, and others. She has taught graduate-level seminars and workshops at Temple University and the University of Michigan.
Sarah Jessica Parker, Booker Prize 2025 judge
© Jem MitchellThe prize's impact
The Booker Prize, first awarded in 1969, is the leading literary award in the English-speaking world, and has brought recognition, reward and readership to outstanding fiction for over five decades. Authors shortlisted for the prize gain global readerships and an increase in profile and sales, and the winner can expect their career to be transformed.
The winner of the 2024 prize, Orbital, written by Samantha Harvey and published by Jonathan Cape, sold over 20,000 print copies in the UK in the week following its win on 12 November, making it the fastest selling winner of the Booker Prize since records began. It was the bestselling title in the UK that week, topping the Audible audio and Amazon physical and eBook charts. Sales through Waterstones were more than double the volume of each of the last decade’s winners, up 3,000% the day after the announcement. The publisher has re-printed 250,000 copies of Orbital in response to the win. Translation rights deals increased from eight before Orbital’s longlisting to a total of 35 territories now either sold or under offer.
Waterstones is currently celebrating the entire Booker Prizes backlist with the Booker Library, an immersive pop-up shop within-a-shop at its flagship Piccadilly store in London. Since 1969, almost 700 works of fiction have been nominated for the Booker – and its sister award, the International Booker Prize. Until the end of the year, those acclaimed books are available to buy in one place for the first time. In addition to browsing the best fiction of the past half century, readers can see this year’s designer-bound books created for the shortlisted authors, have their photograph taken with a life-size version of Iris, the Booker Prize trophy, and explore the Booker’s rich history. There is also a series of reader events in the Booker Library, including drop-in nights with a Waterstones bookseller, a book club for the Booker Prizes’ December Monthly Spotlight – Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan – and a bookbinding workshop.
Samantha Harvey, winner of the Booker Prize 2024, at the ceremony at Old Billingsgate, London
© David Parry for the Booker Prize FoundationPublisher submissions and media enquiries
UK and Irish publishers are now invited to submit their books for the 2025 prize. Rules and submission guidelines are available here. Key deadlines are staggered between 27 January and 31 March 2025. As books published or written by judges of the prize are not eligible for submission, SJP Lit titles published in the UK and/or Ireland will not be considered for the 2025 prize.
For media enquiries, please contact:
Premier: [email protected] / Hannah Stockton +44 (0) 7780 705086
