Judges

One of the UK’s most accomplished and respected novelists, Val McDermid has sold over 19 million books to date across the globe and her work has been translated into more than 40 languages.

She has written five series: cold case detective Karen Pirie was introduced to us in The Distant Echo and the 8th book in the series will be published in 2025, with Karen now starring in a major ITV series; clinical psychologist Dr Tony Hill and DCI Carol Jordan lead a gripping eleven book series adapted for television as Wire in the Blood, starring Robson Green and Hermione Norris; the Kate Brannigan novels showcase a private detective;  journalist Lindsay Gordon is at the heart of another series; and most recently, Val has launched a new series featuring young journalist Allie Burns whose life and experiences we witness at ten year intervals, debuting with 1979  1989.

Val has also published several award-winning standalone novels, books of non-fiction, short story collections and a children’s picture book, My Granny is a Pirate. Val returned to Karen Pirie with her 2023 hardback, Past Lying, which was published in October of that year. 2024 saw the publication of Queen Macbeth, her reimagining of the story of Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth, in May. Her new Karen Pirie novel, Silent Bones, publishes in October 2025.

Nooruddean Choudry, also known as Bearded Genius, is a journalist, author and broadcaster. He specialises in football, social issues, culture and politics.

He currently writes comedy features for Rolling Stone, is a regular guest on the Guardian Football Weekly podcast and is the author of Inshallah United, a story of faith and football. His next book is due out in 2026.

Journalist and author Freya McClements is Northern Correspondent with The Irish Times. From Derry, she is a former reporter with the Derry Journal and was a journalist and producer with the BBC in Northern Ireland from 2007-2016, as well as a documentary producer and presenter for the BBC Radio Ulster and BBC Radio 4.

She is also the author of the short story collection The Dangerous Edge of Things (Guildhall Press, 2012).

Freya was the captain of the team from Magdalen College, Oxford, which won University Challenge in 2004, and she represents Northern Ireland on the BBC Radio 4 Panel show Round Britain Quiz.

Picture credit: Joe Dunne

Andrew McMillan was born in Barnsley in 1988. His debut collection of poetry,  physical, was the only poetry book to ever win the Guardian First Book Award; it was also awarded a Somerset Maugham award, an Eric Gregory Award, the Aldeburgh First Collection Prize and in 2019 was voted as one of the Top 25 Poetry Books of the Past 25 Years by the Booksellers Association.

His second collection,  playtime, won the inaugural Polari Prize. A third collection, pandemonium, was published in 2021 and in 2022 he co-edited the acclaimed anthology 100 Queer Poems, which was shortlisted in the British Book Awards.

He is Professor of Contemporary Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University and a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. His debut novel, Pity, published by Canongate in 2024, has been widely translated and was longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize.

Jude Rogers is a writer and broadcaster from Wales who regularly contributes to The Guardian, the Observer, Elle and New Statesman.

She can also be found delivering pearls of wisdom about the music industry on BBC 5 Live and 6Music – she is a member of the judging panel for the Mercury Music Prize after all.

Jude is the publisher of several music fanzines such as Smoke: A London Peculiar. Suffice to say, what Jude doesn’t know about music probably isn’t worth knowing.