With thanks, the judges of the 2024 ADCI Literary Prize:

Penny Batchelor

Penny Batchelor is an alumni of Faber Academy’s six month ‘Writing a Novel’ course and the author of two psychological thrillers, My Perfect Sister and Her New Best Friend, both published by RedDoor Press. My Perfect Sister was longlisted for The Guardian’s Not The Booker Prize 2020, and Her New Best Friend was described by LoveReading as ‘a white-knuckle tense thriller’. Her short story ‘The Debate’ is in an anthology called UnLocked, published in November 2023 to raise money for The Trussell Trust by a group of authors who all debuted in 2020. She is the co-founder and editor of the Thriller Women blog with fellow author EC Scullion and she and author Victoria Scott successfully campaigned for Amazon to introduce a disability fiction character for adults in their books section.

Rowan Hisayo Buchanan

Rowan Hisayo Buchanan is the author of Harmless Like You, Starling Days and The Sleepwatcher. She is the editor of the Go Home! anthology. Her work has won The Authors’ Club First Novel Award and a Betty Trask Award and has been shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award. Her work has been a New York Times Editors’ Choice, and an NPR Great Read. Her short work has appeared in several places including Granta, Guernica, The Atlantic, and the New York Times. She has received fellowships and residencies from Hedgebrook, Macdowell, Gladstones’ Library, AAWW, The Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, and Kundiman. Read more about Rowan here.

Karl Knights

Karl Knights’ poetry and prose has appeared in The Guardian, The Poetry Review and elsewhere.
He won 2021’s New Poets Prize. His debut pamphlet, Kin, was published by the Poetry Business.

Julia Lund

Julia can’t remember a time when she didn’t think up stories; as a young child, she even made them up about her bedroom wallpaper. And her toes. From the moment she could talk, she told stories (her dad used to call her a mythomaniac), and from the moment she could read, she devoured them. Now, she gets to write them and can’t quite believe she hasn’t made that up, too.

Selina Mills

Selina Mills is an award-winning writer and broadcaster who is legally blind. Educated in the USA and the UK, Selina has worked as a senior reporter and broadcaster for Reuters, The Daily Telegraph, and the BBC. She has regularly writes for publications including The Observer and The Spectator. She is focused on fiction and no fiction disability advocacy and how it shapes our world. Selina was a contributor to the ground-breaking BBC/Loftus series Disability: A New History (2013) which has been rebroadcast around the world, and a regular commentator to BBC Radio 4’s “In Touch” programme. Selina also created the original idea and co-wrote the libretto (with Nicola Werenowska) The Paradis Files, a chamber opera by composer Errollyn Wallen, which premiered at London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall, Southbank in April 2022, and then on tour around the U.K. The opera follows the real life story of Maria-Theresia Von Paradis (1759-1824) the talented musician and blind composer, known as “the Blind enchantress.” Bloomsbury published Selina’s memoir and History book Life Unseen: A Story of Blindness in 2023.

Nii Ayikwei Parkes

Nii Ayikwei Parkes is a Ghanaian-British producer, social commentator and writer who has won acclaim as a children’s author, poet, broadcaster and novelist. Winner of multiple international awards including Ghana’s ACRAG award, he is the Senior Editor at flipped eye publishing, a trustee of the Caine Prize and serves on the editorial board of World Literature Today. Nii Ayikwei has served as a judge for several literature prizes including the Commonwealth Prize, the NSK Neustadt Prize and the Harvill Secker Young Translators’ Prize. He is currently a Hutchins Family Fellow with the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University. Read more about Nii here.

Vikki Patis

Vikki Patis is the bestselling author of psychological suspense. Her latest novel, Return to Blackwater House, was published by Hodder & Stoughton in March 2022. She is represented by Emily Glenister at DHH Literary Agency and also writes historical fiction as Victoria Hawthorne. Her debut historical suspense novel, The House at Helygen, was published in April 2022 by Quercus. She lives in Scotland with her wife, two wild golden retrievers, and an even wilder cat.

Chloe Timms

Chloe Timms is a writer, campaigner and podcast host from the Kent coast. After a career in teaching, Chloe studied for an MA in Creative Writing at the University of Kent and won a scholarship for the Faber Academy. Chloe is passionate about disability rights, having been diagnosed with the condition Spinal Muscular Atrophy at 18 months old, and has campaigned on several crucial issues. In 2022 Chloe launched her podcast Confessions of a Debut Novelist. The Seawomen is her first novel.