Inside The Booker Prize’s Controversial 2025 Judging Panel

‘Winner of the Booker Prize’ is a coveted label that any novel would wear with pride – most recently donned by Samantha Harvey’s Orbital. The most prestigious book award in the English-speaking world, even to be shortlisted guarantees an author lifelong renown. Yet the 2025 judging panel is causing a stir in the literary world – here’s why.

Origins Of The Booker Prize

First awarded in 1969, publishers Tom Maschler and Graham C Greene originally came up with the Booker Prize. They were backed by Booker McConnell, a conglomerate with a recently developed interest in literary estates – and thus the prize was born. Its aim was to ‘stimulate the reading and discussion of contemporary fiction’ among readers from Commonwealth countries. However, the growth of the award has exceeded its humble origins, and it now shapes the literary landscape of the 21st century. 

The 2024 judging panel (© Tom Pilston for Booker Prize Foundation)

Booker Prize 2025 Judging Panel

Next year’s Booker Prize will be judged by the following people: 

• 1993 Booker Prize winner Roddy Doyle
• Booker Prize-longlisted writer Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀
• Writer, broadcaster and literary critic Chris Power
• Booker Prize-longlisted author Kiley Reid
• Sarah Jessica Parker

This final choice has caused some consternation. Why is SJP judging the Booker?

Best known for starring in popular TV series Sex and the City and its revival …And Just Like That Parker’s career stretches all the way back to 1976. Despite her fame, though, many critics consider her an unusual choice for the Booker Prize.

‘Sarah Jessica Parker is a symptom of a dying genre,’ writes Alexander Larman in The Spectator – and her ‘glitzy, Hollywood, and moneyed existence sits uneasily with the usual cliches of penniless writers shivering at home’. He declared her appointment the death of serious fiction – which is perhaps a slight exaggeration, but it certainly indicates a shift in what ‘literature’ means.

The phenomenon of the celebrity novelist is growing, and celebrity book endorsements are often vital to the success of a book – and the 2025 Booker judging panel is changing to reflect this. Bernadine Evaristo, who won the prize in 2019 with Girl, Woman, Other supported the decision to appoint Parker, thanks to her ability to ‘hopefully draw attention to and even expand the audience for literary fiction’. Parker is also not entirely divorced from the business of books. In June 2023, she launched SJP Lit, her own literary imprint in partnership with the publisher Zando. She’s also an avid reader and uses her Instagram – with almost 10 million followers – to share book recommendations.

The other judges are more traditional proponents of ‘serious literary fiction’. Irish novelist and dramatist Roddy Doyle is this year’s chair; an author for more than 40 years, he won the Booker Prize in 1993 with Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha. He is joined by Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀ whose novel A Spell of Good Things was longlisted for the Booker in 2023. Next up is Chris Powers, author of A Lonely Man (longlisted for the Booker in 2020) and presenter of BBC Radio 4’s ‘Open Book’; he writes literary criticism for many respected national publications. Lastly, Kiley Reid, also longlisted for the Booker in 2020, has penned two bestselling novels: Such a Fun Age and her Come and Get It. 

Samantha Harvey wins the 2024 Booker Prize with Orbital

Who Won The Booker Prize This Year?

Samantha Harvey won the 2024 Booker Prize for her novel Orbital, which follows six astronauts as they orbit Earth in the International Space Station. An exquisite philosophical meditation, Orbital is full of juxtapositions between connection and disconnection, ordinary and extraordinary, with Harvey nudging us to question our place on earth and what the planet might become without people.