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Booker winner Bernardine Evaristo to chair Women’s Prize For Fiction 2021

Booker Prize-winning author Bernardine Evaristo will chair the 2021 Women’s Prize For Fiction, organisers have announced.

She will be joined on the panel by TV presenter Vick Hope, novelist Elizabeth Day, columnist Nesrine Malik and news presenter Sarah-Jane Mee.

Evaristo said: “The Women’s Prize For Fiction is such an essential and exciting prize.

Duchess of Cornwall hosts Booker Prize Foundation
Bernadine Evaristo, pictured with The Duchess of Cornwall and Margaret Atwood, will chair the 2021 Women’s Prize For Fiction (Aaron Chown/PA)

“I’m looking forward to chairing it this year, and to discovering a wide range of novels that will give me a strong sense of the preoccupations, styles and aesthetics of contemporary women’s fiction.

“I hope to be blown away by some exceptional novels and to discover some hidden gems that deserve more attention and a wider readership.”

The prize is awarded for the best full-length novel of the year written in English and published in the UK between April 1 2020 and March 31 2021.

The winner receives a cheque for £30,000 along with a limited edition bronze statuette known as the ‘Bessie’, created and donated by the artist Grizel Niven.

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the Women’s Prize For Fiction. To mark the occasion, organisers are asking the public to vote for their favourite winner from the last quarter of a century in order to crown its overall winner of winners.

Voting closes on November 1 and the winner will be unveiled on November 12.