The judging panel for the 2025 Goldsmiths Prize has been announced. Now in its 13th year, the £10,000 prize rewards fiction that breaks the mould and extends the possibility of the novel. This year’s judges include Irish writer Megan Nolan, author of Acts of Desperation (2021) and Ordinary Human Failings (2023).
The other judges are Mark Haddon, whose novels include The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time (2003); Simon Okotie author of The Future of the Novel (a book-length essay forthcoming in spring 2025) and the acclaimed Absalon trilogy of novels; and Amy Sackville (chair), senior lecturer in creative writing at Goldsmiths, whose novels include Painter to the King (2018) and The Still Point (2010), which won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize.
Sackville said: “I know how much prizes can mean to writers and the Goldsmiths Prize in particular means a lot because of what it rewards. It’s had a genuinely meaningful impact on the careers of both those who have previously shortlisted and won.
“The Goldsmiths Prize has brought to attention books that weren’t getting attention and coverage in a mainstream critical forum, and that has genuinely shifted the literary landscape in the last twelve years.”
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The shortlist will be announced on October 1st with the winner declared on November 5th.
To mark the launch, the judging panel took part in a Q&A, sharing insights on the importance of mould-breaking fiction, the significance of book prizes in a highly technologised age, how prizes can retain their significance when recommendations come from many directions, and whether they’ve ever judged a book by its cover.
In today’s context, where books and authors can surge to popularity thanks to the influence of social media, how can Book Prizes retain significance?
Amy Sackville: “Critical landscapes are always changing, and there’s lots and lots of ways that we can receive recommendations for books, from blogging, BookTok, booksellers, critics. All of those things are part of a kind of tapestry, if you like.
“I think the Goldsmiths Prize in particular, because it rewards something quite specific, carries a kind of intellectual weight. It has platformed independent and small presses, it has brought to attention books that weren’t getting attention and coverage in a mainstream critical forum, and that has genuinely shifted the literary landscape in the last 12 years.
“There was a huge public response to the first winner, Eimear McBride’s book which was published by Galley Beggar, and it turned out that there is this massive appetite for work that is doing something different and new.”
Mark Haddon: “I’d simply point at Samantha Harvey’s Orbital. How else would a wonderful novel like that have garnered such a large readership were it not for the Booker?”
Megan Nolan: “I think, internet or no, it’s always meaningful to be considered closely by your peers and particularly by those who have preceded you and managed to not only begin but actually maintain literary careers, which can sometimes appear such an impossibility. My experience with book prizes is that they are always nourishing, win or lose, because they are sustained by people who seriously love and respect the work which goes into writing.”
Simon Okotie: “The word that comes to mind is probably the word ‘curation’. I guess it’s a question of trust, trust in the curation of or the judging of these prizes to bring to light books that you might not ordinarily sort of see or hear about. It’s quite a competitive world out there in terms of people’s attention, for books and things like that. The prizes are very, very important, I think, and particularly for more experimental fiction.”
At a time when franchises, sequels and prequels are widespread in culture, why does ‘mould-breaking’ fiction matter?
Mark Haddon: “I am wary of saying that fiction of any kind ‘matters’. I think we bookish people - writers, readers, publishers, academics, librarians… - all too readily assume that reading ‘quality’ books constitutes some kind of royal road to better mental health, good citizenship and empathy with other human beings. We tend to forget how many people there are out there who either don’t - or can’t - read, and I dislike any pronouncements which suggests they are somehow lesser on that account. I’d say, simply, that ‘mould-breaking’ fiction is something that gives me and many other people profound joy. And that, I think, is more than enough.”
Amy Sackville: “There’s space for all kinds of art and entertainment in the world. What I think fiction is uniquely placed to do is to think about the relation between the interior and the exterior. I don’t think fiction, or any art really, should be didactic or remedial or educational, or be instrumentalised in those ways, but I do think it can serve a function to unsettle us, or jolt us, or surprise us. It can make space for things that are complicated and open to question, and difficult to articulate and messy.”
Megan Nolan: “I’m often quoting a nice line by somebody I have completely forgotten - it may have been Anne Enright - which refers to the unique capabilities of the novel in terms of portraying multiple opposing or competing consciousnesses. I love all sorts of culture but I do feel the novel is strongest in this regard and having a mould-breaking work of fiction force you to witness a person or place or time in a way which was formerly unavailable to you is invaluable.”
Simon Okotie: “Eimear McBride was the first winner of the Goldsmiths Prize. She spent years trying to find a publisher for A Girl is a Half -Formed Thing. When that book was published, it really did something new. These kinds of books are not easy, in terms of form or content. But they challenge our view of the world, and our view of ourselves. They’re not consoling. They’re not just reinforcing our limited sense of ourselves. They are mind expanding, you know. So that’s what mould breaking means for me. It opens something up. And it does sometimes take effort to engage with those art forms.
“I also think maybe we’ll look back at this period as a Golden Age for the novel. I think over the last 10 to 15 or 20 years, particularly with the emergence of a lot more independent publishers who can take risks, and also prizes like the Goldsmiths Prize, maybe this is a golden age we’re living through, in terms of writers in these more experimental traditions being published and being found.”
Knowing how much energy and work goes into writing a book, how are you able to narrow down the longlist of other writers’ works when acting as a judge?
Amy Sackville: “I know how much prizes can mean to writers. I think the Goldsmiths Prize in particular means a lot because of what it rewards. And as well, it’s had a genuinely meaningful career impact on those who have previously been shortlisted and won. I think it’s really important that there is a panel. So, I’m looking forward to some robust discussions with Megan and Simon and Mark.”
Mark Haddon: “I’ve only sat on one other book competition committee before and the biggest lesson I learnt was that a really good book can be read twice or three times and it still works.”
Megan Nolan: “I suppose the first step is acknowledging the limited reality of objective judgement and conceding we are all working from our particular little set of preferences and proclivities and neuroses and turn offs. And then the real work can begin.”
Simon Okotie: “Reading so much fiction in such a short period of time is pretty intense. It’s such a pleasure and privilege, in terms of reading authors I’ve not seen before, and reading authors I’ve been meaning to read for years and haven’t gotten round to it.
“One thing previous judging experiences have made me realise is, the first line is very important. The first page is very important. When you’re doing so much reading and an author doesn’t grab your attention on the first page, obviously, you carry on reading, but you know, it’s an uphill challenge from there.”
How do the values of the Goldsmiths Prize align with your own values when it comes to your writing?
Amy Sackville: “Novels are what interest me, as a reader and as a writer. There’s this quotation I always use in my teaching from Virginia Woolf. She talks about the novel as ‘so clumsy, verbose and undramatic, so rich, elastic and alive.’ And I think that kind of the clumsiness, as well as the elasticity and the richness, is part of what makes the form so fascinating and so flexible. It can adapt and respond to the world and to the expression of consciousness. And because the world and our way of being in it is always changing, because the circumstances that condition us are always in flux, the novel has to keep changing to keep up. I’m really excited by the flexibility of the novel, and I think that kind of playfulness, and seriousness, and reinvention of form is what the Prize is all about.
“The Prize was a big part of what drew me back to Goldsmiths, having done my master’s here, the fact that it’s the home of, I think, the most exciting literary prize in the UK.”
Mark Haddon: “Push the envelope. That’s what give me the most excitement both when I’m writing and when I’m reading. I like to find myself taken to the edge of what’s already been done and to reach out a little further into the dark.”
Megan Nolan: “On a formal level my novels are not particularly innovative, but I have felt that my writing only began to really succeed when I accepted that I could not ape the qualities I admired in others which are not native to my own writing (things like elegance and economy). I was just going to have to accept my limitations and by doing so could root out what it was that actually made my work meaningful.”
Simon Okotie: “The Goldsmith’s Prize, I think, highlights and celebrates that tradition of the novel. The novel tells stories, that’s important, very, very important. But it also does something, it challenges our conventions as well. It’s that challenging strand of the novel that I think the Goldsmith’s Prize celebrates. And that’s the tradition I write in as well.”
New technologies like virtual reality and AI are disrupting the arts, introducing new possibilities but also raising questions around issues like ownership, copyright and authorship. In what ways do technological advances have the potential to expand or change the boundaries of the novel form? Do you think there will come a point when such new forms will be considered as literary products, and when do you think this might happen?
Amy Sackville: “It’s such a volatile and developing field with discourse around it that is changing all the time. My gut reaction is to say that I think I’m not convinced that AI, or we’re talking really about large language models for the moment at least, that they can produce genuine insight into what it’s like to be a person in the world, or to replicate the kinds of surprising connections and dissonances that would come from a human consciousness, which I look for when I’m marking students’ work, for example, as well as when I’m reading.
“I think it’s also worth saying that our art is always shaped by the means of production. And the novel as a form has emerged out of a very specific set of conditions that allowed it to be printed and distributed widely, and that shape changed as print production changed. So of course it will change, but I think I’d be a fool to try to predict how, and when.”
Mark Haddon: “The pace of technological change is so fast that only the foolish or the arrogant would make predictions. But the novel is a very capacious and adaptable beast. Assuming we are all still here and not living in a radioactive desert wasteland in a hundred years time I think we’ll be reading novels that are not greatly different from the novels we’re reading now. In fact, I think we’ll be reading them even if we are living in a radioactive desert wasteland. And they’ll be paperbacks because kindles are going to be no use whatsoever.”
Megan Nolan: “It has already happened, see for instance the NaNoWriMo organisation vouching for the legitimacy of using AI. In short, I may be deluded but I find it hard to imagine that dedicated readers, for whom literature serves as a vital strand of connection to other people and the natural world, would ever be content to read work made by non-human intelligence.”
Simon Okotie: “I think it’s happening already. I think AI at the moment is providing outputs that are extremely conventional, though, in terms of fiction, because the models are statistical. But for me, the novel is primarily text based and it’s always been in dialogue with this sort of conventionality. So, AI could yet be a great gift to the novelist in terms of more fully and efficiently exposing all that is conventional in the form, as a foil. And other forms of novel may of course emerge - the novel is always reinventing itself - but for me text will continue to be central to the definition of the novel.”
Have you ever judged a book by its cover? Which book and why?
Amy Sackville: “Of course, we judge all books by their covers, and rightly so, book design is really important, and an interesting part of publication. I think it’s really hard for publishers to make something that stands out.
“I was looking back at last year’s shortlist and thinking about how striking those six books are in their cover design. I think with the cover design for Parade in particular, and all Rachel Cusk’s books, Faber and Faber have really caught the kind of austerity and seriousness and provocation of her writing. The key is that the design is in sympathy with the work itself.”
Mark Haddon: “Every single time. And I always have. I still remember the excitement, in the late seventies, of buying Ian McEwan and Ada Mars-Jones and Clive Sinclair in those thrillingly modern Picador editions with their white spines and white back covers. And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. Covers aren’t mere packaging. Some covers are works of art. That’s a large part of what’s behind the love of books-as-objects which has kept sales of physical books surprisingly robust despite the rise of e-books.”
Megan Nolan: “I have, though it was an edition with the feared and loathed film adaptation cover- this was The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides published around 1999 to coincide with the Sofia Coppola feature film debut. In its defence it wasn’t one of those objectively hideous adaptation covers with the poster and a lot of graphics on it, it was a slightly hazy still from a scene wherein all the sisters are piled together on a bed, draped over one another, and it appealed to me with good reason as it accurately suggested the atmosphere of cloying, dense, cooped-up femininity upon which the book heavily relies.”
Simon Okotie: “Covers are very, very important, actually. But I don’t stop myself from reading a book if I don’t like the cover. There’s a series of seven novels by Jon Fosse which is called Septology. And I bought the US edition just because I like the cover even more. Personally, I like covers that capture something geometrical, and it’s partly to do with my own writing and scientific, mathematical background. If a cover has something geometrical on it in an aesthetically pleasing way, then I’m favourably disposed towards that book in advance. I sort of assume that a cover like that will have something sort of structurally interesting in the novel.”
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