The Jhalak Prize 2024

This is an online only event streamed on the British Library platform. Bookers will be sent a viewing link shortly before the event and will be able to watch at any time for 48 hours after the start time.  This event will be live captioned.

A celebration of great contemporary British writing, featuring discussions with prize director Sunny Singh; judges of the Jhalak Prize Anni Domingo, Stella Oni and Denise Saul, judges of the Jhalak Children’s and Young Adult Prize Danielle Jawando, JP Rose and Rashmi Sirdeshpande, and the Jhalak Artists in Residence Samer Abdelnour and Yousef Saif.

In addition to the announcement of the winner of the Jhalak Prize and the Jhalak Children’s & Young Adult Prize, the two Jhalak Artists in Residence will reveal the works of art created specially to serve as the 2024 winners’ trophies.

About The Jhalak Prize: First awarded in March 2017, the Jhalak Prize and its sister award Jhalak Children’s & YA Prize founded in 2020, seek to celebrate books by writers of colour in Britain and Ireland.  Further information on Jhalak Prize celebrations, book giveaways, video clips and more can be found on social media via #JhalakPrize24.

The 2024 shortlist for the Jhalak Prize is:
A Flat Place, Noreen Masud (Penguin)
Anansi’s Gold: The Man Who Swindled The World, Yepoka Yeebo (Bloomsbury)
Boundary Road, Ami Rao (Everything With Words)
Fire Rush, Jacqueline Crooks (Penguin)
Self-Portrait As Othello, Jason Allen-Paisant (Carcanet)
Twelve Words For Moss, Elizabeth-Jane Burnett (Penguin)

The 2024 shortlist for the Jhalak Children’s & Young Adult Prize is:
Geoffrey Gets the Jitters, Nadia Shireen (Puffin)
How to Die Famous, Benjamin Dean (Simon and Schuster)
Safiyyah’s War, Hiba Noor Khan (Andersen Press)
Steady for This, Nathanael Lessore (Hot Key Books)
To The Other Side, Erika Meza (Hodder Children’s Books)
Wild Song, Candy Gourlay (David Fickling Books)


Judges for the Jhalak Prize 2024

Anni Domingo is an actor, director and writer working in radio, film and tv, and theatre including The National Theatre. Her debut novel, Breaking the Maafa Chain, was published in 2021 by Jacaranda Books, UK and by Pegasus Books, USA in 2022. It was shortlisted for the Lucy Cavendish first novel competition. An extract from the novel features in the New Daughters of Africa (2019). Her poems and short stories are published in anthologies including Wild Imperfections (2021). Her first screenplay, Blessed Assurance has just been filmed and will be out later this year. Anni is now working on her second novel Ominira as part of her PhD.

Stella Oni’s debut police procedural, Deadly Sacrifice was shortlisted for the SI Leeds Literary Prize and published by Jacaranda in 2020. She has contributed to various anthologies, including Midnight Hour (Crooked Lane). Oni won the International Thriller Writers (ITW) scholarship in 2021 and was a runner-up for the inaugural CrimeFest bursary for writers of colour in 2022. She is an ITW judge and was an adjudicator for the Scottish Association of Writers Crime Fiction Pitlochry Prize 2023. She is writing book two of the Toks Ade Mystery series and the first of her contemporary cosy crime, The London House Mystery series.

Denise Saul’s debut collection The Room Between Us (Pavilion / Liverpool University Press, 2022) was shortlisted for TS Eliot poetry prize 2022, a Poetry Book Society Summer Recommendation 2022 and longlisted for Jhalak prize 2023. Her poem ‘Golden Grove’ was highly commended in the Forward Prize 2022. She is the author of two pamphlets: White Narcissi (flipped eye, 2007) and House of Blue (Rack Press, 2012). A recent guest editor for The Poetry Review, Denise is a past winner of The Poetry Society’s Geoffrey Dearmer Prize and a Fellow of The Complete Works.


Judges for the Jhalak Children’s and YA Prize 2023

Danielle Jawando is an author and screenwriter. Her debut YA novel, And the Stars Were Burning Brightly, won best senior novel in the Great Reads Award, was shortlisted for the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize, the YA Book Prize, the Jhalak Children’s & YA Prize and the Branford Boase Award, and long-listed for the CILIP Carnegie Medal. Her publications include the non-fiction children’s book Maya Angelou (Little Guides to Great Lives). Danielle has also worked on Coronation Street as a storyline writer. Her second novel, When Our Worlds Collided, won the 2023 Jhalak Children’s and YA Prize and the 2023 YA Book Prize. Her third novel, If My Words Had Wings, is published in May 2024.

P. Rosetrained as an actor but eventually chose to focus on writing. She led writing workshops in prisons before starting to write novels. J.P’s teen psychological horror book, The Haunting Of Tyrese Walker(2022), was short and longlisted for several awards. As Jacqui Rose, she is the bestselling author of over 16 gritty crime novels. Writing for adults, she has collaborated on Martina Cole’s latest novel, and writing for children, J.P is working on multiple projects, including a historical middle grade novel.

Rashmi Sirdeshpande is an award-winning children's author. Her picture book with Ruchi Mhasane, Dadaji's Paintbrush, was shortlisted for the Jhalak Prize in 2023. She was an official World Book Day author for 2022. Her first picture book, Never Show a T-Rex a Book, illustrated by Diane Ewen, won the 2021 Society of Authors Queen's Knickers Award and the Anna Dewdney Award in the USA, and was shortlisted for the Lollies 2022. Her non-fiction book, Good News: Why the World is Not as Bad As You Think, illustrated by Adam Hayes, was shortlisted for the Blue Peter Book Awards.

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