Hollywood actress Sarah Jessica Parker, best known for her role in 'Sex and the City,' has been announced as a judge for the 2025 Booker Prize, according to the organisers on Tuesday.
The jury will be chaired by Irish writer Roddy Doyle, who won the Booker Prize for fiction in 1993 with his novel 'Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha.' Parker will be joined by Nigerian novelist Ayobami Adebayo, British writer and literary critic Chris Power, and American author Kiley Reid.
At 59, Parker, who holds one Emmy and four Golden Globes, has been steadily building her reputation in the publishing world. She previously served as editorial director for a Penguin subsidiary and launched her own literary imprint, SJP Lit, in 2023 in collaboration with an independent publisher.
Describing the opportunity to be part of the jury as both 'very daunting' and 'the thrill of a lifetime,' Parker told The New York Times, 'I think of judges as academics, learned, experienced in ways I'm just not. I didn't pursue higher education. I don't have any degrees.'
Gaby Wood, Chief Executive of the Booker Prize Foundation, praised Parker's long-standing support for contemporary fiction, adding that the 2025 judges form 'a jury of creative peers like no other.'
Authors and publishers can now submit their works for the 2025 Booker Prize. A longlist of 12 or 13 novels will be announced in July, with finalists revealed in September, and the winner to be declared in November 2025.
Established in 1969, the Booker Prize is awarded annually to the 'best sustained work of fiction written in English' and is renowned for discovering emerging literary talents. Past winners include literary giants such as Salman Rushdie, Margaret Atwood, and Han Kang, who won the 2016 Booker Prize with 'The Vegetarian' and later the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature.
This year's Booker Prize, dominated by women, was awarded to British writer Samantha Harvey for her novel 'Orbital.'
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