With thanks, the judges of the 2025 Sunday Times Charlotte Aitken Young Writer of the Year Award:

Johanna Thomas-Corr (chair)

Johanna Thomas-Corr is the chief literary critic for the Times and Sunday Times. Her articles and reviews have also appeared in The Observer, the Financial Times, the New Statesman and the Evening Standard, and she has been a judge for the Goldsmiths Prize for Fiction, The British Book Awards and The Sky Arts Prize for Literature.

Jimi Famurewa

Jimi Famurewa is a British-Nigerian author, broadcaster and freelance journalist. His writing has appeared in the Guardian, Wired, GQ and The New York Times. He is the former restaurant critic for the Evening Standard, guest judge on the BBC One series MasterChef, a regular host on BBC Radio 4’s The Food Programme, part of the rotating expert panel on BBC One’s Morning Live and was also a lead judge on Channel 4’s The Great Cookbook Challenge with Jamie Oliver. He hosted the award-winning podcast Where’s Home Really?, won Restaurant Writer of the Year at the 2021 Fortnum & Mason Awards and is a three-time winner of the Guild of Food Writers Restaurant Writing Prize. His first book, Settlers, was published by Bloomsbury in 2022 and was shortlisted for Foyles Non-Fiction Book of the Year. His second, Picky, was published by Hodder in 2025 and won Food Book of the Year at the 2026 Guild of Food Writers Awards. He is a columnist and contributing editor for Broadsheet London and has a newsletter called Seconds.

Laura Hackett

Laura Hackett is the deputy literary editor and fiction editor of The Times and Sunday Times. She has also written for the Irish Times, Literary Review and the BBC, is a former winner of the BBC Student Critic of the Year award and frequently appears on BBC Radio 4 and Times Radio in a bookish capacity. She has previously judged the Irish Book Awards and the Sky Arts Prize for Poetry.

Luke Kennard

Luke Kennard is an award-winning poet and novelist who lives in Birmingham. His first collection was published in 2005, winning an Eric Gregory award. His fifth collection, Cain (2016), was shortlisted for the International Dylan Thomas Prize and his sixth, Notes on the Sonnets, won the Forward Prize for Best Collection in 2021. His most recent book of poems, The Book of Jonah, was published by Picador in 2025. His first novel, The Transition (2017), was a BBC Radio 4 Book at Bedtime and was shortlisted for the Desmond Elliott Award. He has reviewed fiction and poetry for the LRB, Telegraph and TLS and is a professor of literature and creative writing at the University of Birmingham. His latest novel, Black Bag, was published by John Murray in 2026 and has been longlisted for the Booker Prize.

Kamila Shamsie

Kamila Shamsie is the author of eight novels, including Best of Friends, Burnt Shadows, and Home Fire which won the Women’s Prize for Fiction and was longlisted for the Booker Prize. She is a Vice President of the Royal Society of Literature, and her novels have been translated into over 30 languages. Her new novel Impunity will be published by Bloomsbury in 2027.

Benjamin Wood

Benjamin Wood’s fifth novel, Seascraper, was longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2025 and won the Nero Book Award for Fiction and the Winston Graham Historical Prize. He has taught fiction and developed creative writing programmes as a senior lecturer at King’s College London and Birkbeck, University of London for the past twenty years. His books have been shortlisted for various prizes, including the Costa First Novel Award, the Commonwealth Book Prize, the RSL Encore Award, the CWA Gold Dagger Award, and the European Union Prize for Literature. He was shortlisted for the Sunday Times Young Writer of Year in 2016 for his second novel, The Ecliptic.