Novelists Ali Smith, Jackie Kay and Guy Gunaratne are to judge a new, expanded Rathbones Folio prize for 2023. The prize is set to expand to three categories, filling a gap left by the demise of the Costa book awards.
Launched in 2014, the Folio prize has been awarded annually to a work of literature. In 2017, it was opened to nonfiction and poetry as well, although it still named only one winner a year.
For 2023, the prize will expand to three categories: fiction, nonfiction and poetry, with a winner named in each who will go on to compete for the overall prize.
The new format is an echo of the Costa book awards, which came to a sudden end earlier this year. The Costas crowned winners in five categories – novel, debut novel, nonfiction, poetry and children’s – with the category winners going on to compete for the overall book of the year.
The expanded Rathbones Folio prize will have shortlists of four books in each of its three categories, and the winner of each category will receive £2,000. The overall winner will then get an additional £30,000.
Organisers said they had “decided to refresh its format to address the changing landscape of literary prizes, including the recent discontinuation of awards such as the Costa book awards, and the impact this has for writers”.
In a statement, the prize’s executive director Minna Fry and co-founder and chair Andrew Kidd said: “We and our brilliantly supportive sponsors Rathbones are hugely excited about this new refinement and expansion of the existing format. It will significantly aid what has always been this prize’s ultimate aim: to help publishers and booksellers to put more of the best books being published today – as chosen by writers themselves (a feature unique to this prize) – into the hands of more readers.”
The judges are chosen each year from the members of the Folio Academy, and titles for consideration are nominated by its members. The shortlists for the 2023 awards will be revealed early next year, with the category and overall winners announced at a ceremony at the British Library in March.
Previous Folio prize winners include Colm Tóibín, Carmen Maria Machado, Raymond Antrobus, Hisham Matar and George Saunders.
