Shahidha Bari
2022 Booker Prize Judge
Shahidha Bari is a British broadcaster and academic, who presents Inside Culture on BBC2 and Free Thinking on BBC Radio 3.
In the course of this work – as well as hosting live events at the Southbank, Hay Festival and the Royal Society of Literature – she has interviewed a number of Booker Prize winners, including Anne Enright, Howard Jacobson, Julian Barnes, Marlon James and Salman Rushdie.
Having studied English at Cambridge and taught literature at the University of London for over 15 years, she is now a Professor at the University of the Arts London. Her book Keats: The Life of Sensations was published by Routledge in 2011 and her second, Dressed: The Secret Life of Clothes, by Jonathan Cape in 2019.
Shahidha is a regular book reviewer for the Guardian as well as writing for the Financial Times and the TLS, among other publications. She is a Trustee of the Brontë Parsonage. She judged the Baillie Gifford Prize in 2020 and was Chair of the Judges for the Forward Prizes for Poetry in 2019.
