Judges

Kit Fan‘s first novel is Diamond Hill. This third poetry collection The Ink Cloud Reader was shortlisted for the Forward Prize and T.S. Eliot Prize. He reviews regularly for the Guardian and TLS. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and Vice-Chair of Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS). He was born and educated in Hong Kong and now lives in the UK.

“I’m thrilled to join the judging panel for 2025 Northern Writers’ Awards. My first novel wouldn’t have seen the light of day without getting a Northern Writers’ Award for Fiction in 2018. I look forward to reading well-crafted narratives with vivid characters caught up in the beauty and chaos of our times.”

Tice Cin is an interdisciplinary artist from North London. Keeping the House has been named one of Guardian’s Best Books of 2021, and has been featured in The Scotsman, The New York Times and the Washington Post. She is a recent recipient of a Society of Authors Somerset Maugham Prize, and was shortlisted for Book of the Year at the British Book Awards. A filmmaker, she is currently writing and co-directing three short films. She has just produced, self-funded and directed her first and second short films.

“It feels a wonderful full circle moment to be on the judging panel for the 2025 Northern Writers’ Award. It’s an honour to be working with New Writing North on the Northern Writers’ Awards, whose team have supported me with my own career for many years. The level of support that this will afford to writers in the North of England, who are often siloed by the matrix of the English publishing ecosystem, continues to be a much needed light in an alley. It was through a writers development programme such as this that I was able to have my debut novel read by people who were truly able to take the time with what it was that I’d written, and that’s what I’d like to do when judging this time around, to really take time and take in the work of new work-in-progress with thoughtfulness and patience. I’ll be looking for work that is both interested in the microscopic nuances in a moment and global care, narratives that don’t shy away from viscerally engaging the reader and think deeply about mood.”

image © Eric Aydin-Barberini

Sandra Sawicka joined the Marjacq agency in 2014. Her main interest is genre fiction – from horror (Alex North, Matt Wesolowski), through gothic (Syd Moore, Olivia Isaac-Henry), to crime (Niki Mackay, Kat Diamond) to YA (Amy McCaw, Rose Edwards). She enjoys all things atmospheric, spooky and occult.

“I’m delighted to be one of this year’s judges for New Writing North – I can’t wait to see what talent we are going to discover.”

Kathleen Jamie’s poetry collections include The Overhaul, which won the 2012 Costa Poetry Prize, and The Tree House, which won the Forward prize. Her non-fiction includes the highly regarded Findings trilogy (Findings, Sightlines, and Surfacing), all regarded as important contributions to the ‘new nature writing’. The Bonniest Companie appeared in 2015, and won the Saltire Scottish Book of the Year Award.

The Keeliehawk – Poems in Scots appeared in 2024. From 2021-24, Kathleen served as Scotland’s Makar, or National Poet.

“It’s always exciting, and challenging, to see new writers emerge. I’m greatly looking forward to co-judging this award, and would urge all emergent poets in the North of England to apply.”

Alycia Pirmohamed is a Canadian-born poet based in Scotland. She is the author of the poetry collection Another Way to Split Water. In 2023, she won the Nan Shepherd Prize for her nonfiction debut A Beautiful and Vital Place, forthcoming with Canongate.

Her other works include the pamphlets Hinge and Faces that Fled the Wind, and the collaborative essay Second Memory, which was co-authored with Pratyusha.

Alycia is the co-founder of the Scottish BPOC Writers Network, a co-organiser of the Ledbury Poetry Critics Program.