- Celebrated journalist and bestselling author Bill Bryson announced as Chair of Judges
- Bryson will be joined by award-winning novelist Bernardine Evaristo and renowned broadcaster Emily Maitlis to decide this year’s winner of the Nero Gold Prize, Book of the Year
- The panel will be selecting between the four category winning titles for the £30,000 Nero Gold Prize: Lost in the Garden by Adam S Leslie (Fiction), Maurice and Maralyn by Sophie Elmhirst (Non-Fiction), Wild Houses by Colin Barrett (Debut) and The Twelve by Liz Hyder (Children’s)
- The winner of the Nero Gold Prize will be announced on 5th March at a ceremony hosted by broadcast journalist Sarah Montague, at the Outernet in central London
The Nero Book Awards have today announced the final judging panel tasked with selecting the 2024 Nero Gold Prize, Book of the Year winner. The panel – led by beloved journalist and author Bill Bryson – will select the overall winner from the four category-winning titles.
Bill Bryson is joined by award-winning author and creative writing professor Bernardine Evaristo. Evaristo is the President of the Royal Society of Literature and is best known for her internationally bestselling novel Girl, Woman, Other. Completing the judging panel is celebrated journalist and broadcast anchor Emily Maitlis, host of The News Agents podcast on LBC, and formally lead anchor of BBC Two’s Newsnight. The trio will decide the Nero Gold Prize winner, which will be announced at an awards ceremony in London on Wednesday 5th March, presented by host, Sarah Montague.
Launched in 2023, The Nero Book Awards are the unique multi-category literary awards celebrating the best writers based in the UK and Ireland and have already established themselves as ‘one of Britain and Ireland’s top literary prizes’ (The Observer). The winners from each category were announced in January and chosen by expert judging panels made up of authors, booksellers and journalists who, together, selected their best books of the year.
The four books in the running for the 2024 Nero Gold Prize, Book of the Year are:
- Fiction winner – Lost in the Garden by Adam S. Leslie (Dead Ink Books)
- Non-Fiction winner – Maurice and Maralyn: An Extraordinary True Story of Shipwreck, Survival and Love by Sophie Elmhirst (Chatto & Windus)
- Debut Fiction winner – Wild Houses by Colin Barrett (Jonathan Cape)
- Children’s Fiction winner – The Twelve by Liz Hyder (Pushkin Children’s Books). Illustrated by Tom De Freston
The category winners all receive £5,000 in prize money, with the overall Nero Gold Prize winner receiving £30,000 alongside the coveted Nero Gold Prize trophy.
Together, the category winning books represent high quality writing and craftmanship in literature and offer something for readers of all tastes: a true tale of love and survival amidst a shipwreck; a folk horror story following three friends on a perilous journey to a forbidden place; a comic novel set in small town, Ireland; and a children’s adventure filled with magic, folklore and science. These four exceptional books have been selected out of over 700 submitted by publishers from across the UK and Ireland. For more information about the four category winners and their authors, visit: https://nerobookawards.com/category-winners-2024/
Gerry Ford, Founder and Group CEO of Caffè Nero and Founder of the Nero Book Awards commented: “The four category winners this year represent the most outstanding books published in the UK and Ireland and we couldn’t have chosen a more prestigious panel to select the Nero Gold Prize winner. They have the difficult job of picking just one winner and I am looking forward to finding out which book Bill, Bernardine and Emily select. We are also thrilled to have Sarah Montague return as the host of the ceremony after doing such a fantastic job last year. I am proud of Caffè Nero’s support of the arts through the Awards, and we cannot wait to see these Awards grow from strength to strength.”