Shaping the Longlist: My Journey on the Wilbur Smith Prize panel

Have you ever wondered how books get long/shortlisted for prizes? This year I got the opportunity to not only peek behind the curtain of book awards, but also to shape the longlist itself! The Wilbur and Niso Smith Foundation sent out an invitation to librarians and library staff nationwide to join the review panel for the Adventure Writing prize for Best Published Novel. I jumped at the chance of helping to select books for the prize and was thrilled to find my application to join the panel was accepted. 

There were over 150 submissions for the prize this year, and each panel member had 12 titles to read and review. The panel members then met at the Wilbur and Niso Smith Foundation’s headquarters in North London, where we spent the day discussing the books to figure out which 12 books would make it onto the longlist. From there the task of picking the winner was passed over to the judging panel. 

Fast forward 4 months and I received an invitation to attend the awards ceremony at the headquarters of a finance firm in Central London. Highlights of the event included, but were not limited to, waiters circuiting the room with canapes and sparkling wine, a musician playing gentle jazz piano, and spotting Booktuber Eric Carl Anderson in the crowd! At one point I was about 2 metres away from Louis de Bernières, and I got the chance to speak to the author of my personal favourite selection, which left me a bit starstruck! 

After the Best Unpublished Manuscript and Author of Tomorrow prize winners had been announced came the moment of truth: the winner of 2024’s best published novel, was Saltblood by Francesca de Tores, the story of Mary Read and how she went from humble beginnings to swashbuckling female pirate! A very worthy winner, although I am convinced that Our Hideous Progeny by C.E. McGill must have been a very close second. A spiritual sequel to Frankenstein, this gothic novel takes us from the Isle of Wight to Inverness via London and looks at the place of a female academic within Victorian society. 

I found the whole experience fascinating, and felt a real buzz at the thought that my input has influenced the outcome of a prize and, potentially, introduced readers to books they may not have heard of, or considered to be adventure stories. 

Melissa works as one of our fantastic Assistant Library Managers and has a love for adventure fiction.