2023 Judging Panel
Jen Hadfield
Jen Hadfield lives in Shetland. Her first collection, Almanacs, won an Eric Gregory Award in 2003. Her second collection, Nigh-No-Place, won the T.S. Eliot Prize and was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection. She won the Edwin Morgan Poetry Competition in 2012. Her fourth collection The Stone Age, published by Picador in 2021, explores neurodiversity and won the 2021 Highland Book Prize. She is also working on a collection of essays about Shetland.
Cynan Jones
Cynan Jones is an acclaimed fiction writer from the west coast of Wales. His work has appeared in over twenty countries, and in journals and magazines including Granta, Freeman’s and The New Yorker. He has also written a screenplay for the hit crime drama Hinterland, a collection of tales for children, and a number of stories for BBC Radio. He has been longlisted and shortlisted for numerous awards, and won, among other prizes, the Wales Book of the Year Fiction Prize, a Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Award, and the BBC National Short Story Award.
Peter Mackay / Pàdraig MacAoidh
Peter Mackay is a poet, broadcaster, translator and lecturer. He has two collections with Acair – Galore (2015) and Some Kind of (2020) – and a pamphlet, From another island (2010), with Clutag Press. Originally from the Isle of Lewis, he lives in Edinburgh and works in the School of English at the University of St Andrews. In 2024 he was appointed Scottish Makar.
‘S ann à Leòdhas a tha Pàdraig MacAoidh, agus chaidh dà leabhar bàrdachd leis fhoillseachadh le Acair – Gu Leòr (2015) agus Nàdur De (2020) – agus pamflaid le Clutag Press, From another island (2010). Tha e ag obair mar òraidiche aig Oilthigh Chill Rìmhinn agus o 2024 tha e air a bhith Makar na h-Alba.
Alex Ogilvie
Alex is a trustee of the Highland Society of London, and his particular focus within the Society is on promoting and supporting the arts in the Highlands of Scotland.
As well as presenting the Highland Book Prize, the Society provides funding to the University of the Highlands and Islands for a dissertation prize and sponsors the Fiction prize at the Gaelic Literature Awards.
Alex grew up near Fort William, the son of a Classics professor, in a house overflowing with books; since then, he has retained a love of both reading and the Highlands – and tries to combine both, wherever possible. He currently lives in the South of England and works for Warner Bros. International Television.
Alex is the non-voting Chair of the Highland Book Prize Judging Panel.