Bestselling and award-winning authors Louise Doughty, Patrice Lawrence and Kevin Power, journalist Zoe West and columnist and memoirist Rhik Samadder are among those announced today by premium coffee house Caffè Nero as judges for the 2024 Nero Book Awards.
 
The Nero Book Awards launched in 2023 have already established themselves as “one of Britain and Ireland’s top literary prizes” (The Observer). The prestigious awards are focused on recognising outstanding writing and celebrating the joy of reading by selecting the top books of the year in the U.K. and Ireland. The inaugural winner of the Nero Book Awards Gold Prize was The Bee Sting by Paul Murray, a book that has received widespread critical and reader acclaim since its release in 2023. Murray described winning the Nero Gold Prize as “a tremendous honour”. Winning the Gold Prize propelled The Bee Sting to a wider audience, with the paperback jumping from #3,724 to #129 in the Amazon book charts the morning after the announcement. Simon Prosser, Hamish Hamilton Publishing Director said: “Winning the Fiction Category and Gold Prize was a great extra boost for The Bee Sting as we prepared to launch our paperback edition, and we were delighted when the book went straight into the Top 5 of the Sunday Times paperback fiction bestseller chart.”
 
The Nero Book Awards 2024 judging panels are comprised of key industry experts who review hundreds of books before deciding which are the best books of the year. These industry experts include award-winning authors, respected journalists, reputable booksellers and well-known industry professionals. Joining those listed above on the 2024 panels include the co-owner of award-winning bookshop Bookbugs and Dragon Tales, Leanne Fridd; Woman & Home Books Editor Zoe West; and Associate Editor of The Bookseller, Caroline Sanderson.
 
The Nero Book Awards 2024 judging panels highlight the importance of author participation in the Awards process. Best-selling author Rhik Samadder, who wrote the memoir I Never Said I Loved You, takes his place on the Non-Fiction panel while award-winning children’s writer Patrice Lawrence, who received an MBE for services to literature in 2021, represents the author’s voice on the Children’s Fiction panel. Kevin Power, author of two critically acclaimed novels including Bad Day in Blackrock (2010) joins the Fiction Award panel while Louise Doughty, author of ten novels, most of which have been adapted for screen including Apple Tree Yard, is one of three Debut Fiction category judges. Doughty says:
 
“The Nero Awards are a vital part of our literary eco-system and at the same time unique in offering multi-category prizes that reward novels, debuts, non-fiction and children's writing. They are the only literary prize concentrating on talent from the UK and Ireland, and it is a great honour to be asked to
judge. I've had a fantastic summer ploughing through the most wonderful variety of debut novels on offer and really look forward to slugging it out with my fellow judges in our meetings to come.”
 
A set of multi-category awards celebrating the craft of great writing and the joy of reading, the Nero Book Awards were launched in May 2023 and are run as a not-for-profit organisation by independent, family-owned coffee house group Caffè Nero, in partnership with The Booksellers Association and Brunel University London. The Awards’ mission is to point readers of all ages and interests in the direction of outstanding books and writers across four categories: Children’s Fiction, Debut Fiction, Fiction and Non-Fiction.
 
Celebrating books across multiple genres, the Nero Book Awards are uniquely awarded to books by writers based in the UK and Ireland. Featuring shortlists and winners across four categories and culminating with one book being crowned overall winner of the Nero Gold Prize Book of the Year, the Awards provide readers of all tastes with a recognisable mark of quality writing and readability.
 
Gerry Ford, Founder and CEO, Caffè Nero, added: “The inaugural year of the Nero Book Awards was a huge success, spotlighting some of the best books published in 2023. The impact of the Awards on the industry and on readers has been heartwarming to see and I am delighted to be continuing our work in 2024. Caffè Nero has a long-standing programme to encourage the arts and culture, and these Book Awards are a key part of our work. The judging panels this year consists of a number of industry experts and high-profile authors, and I cannot wait to see the final line-up of shortlisted titles that they select for the Nero Book Awards 2024, recognising the incredible talent in the UK and Ireland.”
 
The key dates for the 2024 Awards are also announced today. The 16-strong shortlist, comprising of four books in each category, will be announced on 3^rd December 2024. The category winners will then be announced on 14^th January 2025. The 2024 Nero Gold Prize will be announced live at a ceremony in London on 5^th March 2025, when the book of the year will be selected from the four category winners.
 
Full details of the Nero Book Awards partners and category judges can be found below. Further information about the Awards can be found at www.nerobookawards.com.
 
NERO BOOK AWARDS 2024 – FULL LIST OF JUDGES
 
CHILDREN’S FICTION AWARD

• Patrice Lawrence: Author
• Leanne Fridd: Owner, Bookbugs and Dragontales
• Sarah Webb: Children’s festival programmer and reviewer

 
DEBUT FICTION AWARD

• Louise Doughty: Author
• Matthew Hennessey: Fiction and Crime Buyer, Waterstones
• Gillian Stern: Freelance editor and ghostwriter

 
FICTION AWARD

• Kevin Power: Novelist, critic and academic 
• Dr Will Smith: co-owner and bookseller of Sam Read Bookseller, Grasmere, and academic
• Zoe West: Books Editor, Woman & Home

 
NON-FICTION AWARD

• Sophie Macintosh: Non-Fiction buyer, WHSmith
• Rhik Samadder: Memoirist, journalist and creative writing tutor
• Caroline Sanderson: The Bookseller non-fiction reviewer and author

 
 
NERO BOOK AWARDS 2024 - PARTNERS
 
Caffè Nero Group Ltd:
Caffè Nero is the largest independent coffee house group in Europe. It was founded in 1997 by Gerry Ford, who remains the Group CEO. Caffè Nero continues to be a family owned and operated business. It operates over 1,100 stores across 10 countries, with more than 630 stores across the UK. The Group employs over 7,000 people in the UK.
 
Since 2016, through its charitable foundation, Caffè Nero has donated over $850,000 to UK and international humanitarian causes, as well as supporting and funding coffee farmers in the communities which produce Caffè Nero’s green coffee beans. 
www.nerobookawards.com
 
The Booksellers Association:
The Booksellers Association is the membership organisation for booksellers in the UK and Ireland, and represents over 95% of booksellers. The BA exists to support, advise and work with its members to provide business-critical products and services for booksellers.
 
These include National Book Tokens, a gift card which prompts increased footfall and keeps gift spending in the book trade;  Batchline and Batch, an award-winning EPOS, stock management and payments service, which saves time, money and hassle when settling invoices and organising returns; a full range of money-saving affinity deals; a free Business Support Helpline; Booktime magazine; government lobbying and representation work across the nations and regions; networking opportunities and events; and Books Are My Bag, a range of consumer-facing activity and campaigns, which include Indie Book of the Month, Independent Bookshop Week, Bookshop Day, the Books Are My Bag Readers Awards, Christmas Books and Summer Books catalogues and more.
www.booksellers.org.uk
 
Brunel University London:
Brunel University London is an international university committed to bringing benefit to society through excellence in education, research and knowledge transfer. Situated in Uxbridge, the university has a broad portfolio of undergraduate and postgraduate programmes that attract 16,500 students and 2,700 staff from more than 150 countries. It is the UK's joint most internationally focussed university, and joint 4th in the world, according to the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2024.
 
Brunel has a reputation for high-impact academic research and entrepreneurial flair. The Complete University Guide 2024 ranks us 6th in the UK for research intensity, and 72.7% of our research was assessed as being world-leading or internationally excellent in the Research Excellence Framework 2021.
 
The university works extensively with industry partners, contributing to global innovation and policy change. It is the home of the sandwich degree, and the Global University Employability Ranking 2022 lists Brunel as 14th in the UK for producing the most employable graduates.
 
A civic university, Brunel uses innovation and entrepreneurialism to drive the local economy, and to build important strategic partnerships with local organisations to bring benefit to – and increase its impact in – the local community.
www.brunel.ac.uk
 
NERO BOOK AWARDS 2024 – JUDGES’ BIOGRAPHIES
 
DEBUT FICTION AWARD
 
Louise Doughty is the author of ten novels, the latest of which is A Bird in Winter, published by Faber & Faber. Her previous books include bestseller Apple Tree Yard, which was adapted as a BBC One TV series starring Emily Watson; Platform Seven, filmed for ITVX and Black Water, which was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. She also created and wrote the hit series Crossfire, starring Keeley Hawes. She has been nominated for multiple awards including the Women's Prize for Fiction and the Sunday Times Short Story Prize. Her work has been translated into thirty languages.
 
Gillian Stern volunteered to read the slush pile at a literary agency while on maternity leave 25 years ago, where she found a novel that went on to get a publishing deal and win several awards. That feeling of helping to bring a debut novelist into the world never quite left her, so she quit her job and set up as a freelance structural and developmental editor of fiction and non-fiction. Since then, she has discovered, edited and championed many debut novelists, several of whom have gone on to publish bestsellers. She was a judge on the Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize for several years. Gillian combines this work with ghost-writing and has written several Sunday Times bestsellers, one of her books even being turned into a West End musical.
 
Matthew Hennessy has worked as a bookseller for 15 years and he is currently the Fiction Buyer for Waterstones. He also co-hosts a books podcast, The Hatchards Podcast. He is a regular on judging panels for literary prizes and was most recently on the judging panel for the Val McDermid Debut Prize.
 
 
FICTION AWARD
Kevin Power is a novelist and critic who lives in Dublin. Kevin’s first novel, Bad Day in Blackrock, was published in 2008 and was made into the film What Richard Did (2012), directed by Lenny Abrahamson. Kevin’s second novel, White City, was published in 2021, and in 2022 a collection of essays and criticism, The Written World, appeared. He writes essays and reviews for all sorts of places, including The New York Review of Books, The Guardian, The New Yorker, and The Irish Times. He also teaches Creative Writing in the School of English, Trinity College Dublin.
 
Dr Will Smith lives in the Lake District where he co-owns Sam Read Bookseller. He has spent over two decades in the book trade, including previous roles at Ottakar’s and Blackwell’s. Each month, he writes the paperback preview for The Bookseller, book reviews for Cumbria Life magazine and appears on BBC Radio Cumbria. He has previously judged the Costa Book Awards, the Books Are My Bag Indie Book Awards and the Nature Chronicles prize. He has a PhD in Canadian Literature and has published academic research on literary prizes. 
 
Zoe West is the Books Editor of Woman&Home, Woman’s Weekly, Woman and Woman’s Own. When Zoe isn't reading she is interviewing authors, hosting live events and seeking out exciting new authors to tell her many readers about. She also enjoys meeting celebrities and re-telling their stories for various features in the magazines. In a previous life Zoe planned advertising campaigns for major record companies and has many stories of her own to tell.
 
NON-FICTION AWARD
 
Rhik Samadder is an actor, writer and journalist. He has worked for the RSC, HBO, BBC and Channel 4. He created the popular Inspect A Gadget column in the Guardian, and several other long-running columns including Wellness or Hellness. His diary of quitting his phone was a weekly feature of Reclaim Your Brain, the fastest growing newsletter the Guardian ever launched, with over 100,000 sign ups in the first three months. He writes features for GQ, the Sunday Times and Observer Magazine and in 2019 released the memoir I Never Said I Loved You. A Sunday Times bestseller, the book has been optioned for feature film, for which he is currently writing the screenplay.
 
Caroline Sanderson is a writer and books journalist. She is Associate Editor of The Bookseller for which she has compiled the monthly New Titles preview of forthcoming non-fiction since 2000. Caroline is a Writing For Life Fellow of the Royal Literary Fund, and most recently served as Writer in Residence at Somerset NHS Foundation Trust. Programme Director of Stroud Book Festival, Caroline is herself the author of six non-fiction books, including biographies of Jane Austen and the singer, Adele. Her memoir – Listen With Father: How I Learned to Love Classical Music – will be published by Unbound in July 2025.
 
Sophie Macintosh is the Buyer of Non-Fiction Books for WHSmith High Street and Online and has worked for the company in the Books team for over 13 years, predominantly in the Non-Fiction category. Brought up in Wiltshire, Sophie studied for her BA in History at Exeter University and went on to complete a master’s degree in Contemporary History at the University of Bristol. Sophie is based in Swindon.
 
CHILDREN’S FICTION AWARD
 
Patrice Lawrence is an award-winning writer. Her books have been shortlisted for the Costa Children’s Book Award and the Carnegie Award, won the Bookseller YA Prize and Waterstones Prize for Older Children’s Fiction, the Bristol Crimefest YA Prize (twice), the Woman and Home Teen Drama Award, the inaugural Jhalak Children's Award for Writers of Colour and the Little Rebels Awards for Radical Children's Fiction. She has been awarded an MBE for Literature and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
 
Sarah Webb is an award-winning Irish children’s author and bookseller. She is the Events Manager at Halfway up the Stairs children’s bookshop in Greystones, Co Wicklow, Ireland, winner of An Post Bookshop of the Year 2023/24. Her books include Blazing a Trail: Irish Women who Changed the World (illustrated by Lauren O’Neill) and I Am the Wind: Irish Poems for Children Everywhere (illustrated by Ashwin Chacko and co-edited by Lucina Jacob), both winners of Irish Book Awards. Sarah is passionate about bringing children and books together and has been awarded both the Children’s Books Ireland Award for Outstanding Contribution to Children’s Books in Ireland, and the Library Association of Ireland President’s Medal for her work promoting children’s books and libraries. 
 
Leanne Fridd is the co-owner and manager of Bookbugs and Dragon Tales Bookshop in Norwich, which she opened with her husband in 2019. As a former performing arts lecturer, Leanne wanted to create a safe and welcoming city centre space, with an emphasis on community, creativity and education for all. When not running workshops and recommending books to eager young readers, she loves spending time with her five grown-up children, watching theatre, reading, showing off and listening to podcasts.