Chris Morash is the Seamus Heaney Professor of Irish Writing in Trinity College Dublin.  His most recent book, Dublin: A Writer’s City was published in 2023. He is currently editing the Cambridge History of the Irish Novel and writing a new book about Irish literary salons.  He was the 2022 Macgeorge Fellow at the University of Melbourne, and curated the Unseen Plays series for the Abbey Theatre (2021).

Ellah Wakatama Allfrey, OBE is an independent critic, broadcaster and editor and is currently Visiting Professor at Goshen College, Indiana. She is the editor of Safe House: Explorations in Creative Non-fiction (Cassava Republic, 2016) and Africa39: New Writing from Africa South of the Sahara (Bloomsbury, 2014). The former Deputy Editor of Granta magazine, she sits on the boards of Art for Amnesty, the Caine Prize for African Writing and the Writers’ Centre Norwich. She is patron of the Etisalat Prize for Literature and served as a judge for the 2015 Man Booker Prize. Her journalism has appeared in the Independent, the Guardian, the Telegraph, the Spectator and the Observer and she has been a regular contributor to the book pages of NPR in the USA.  Photo Credit: Charlie Hopkinson

Hon. Eugene R. Sullivan, non-voting chair of the judging panel, is a former Chief Judge of a US Court of Appeals and brings a wealth of experience from sixteen years on the bench. His first novel, The Majority Rules, was published in 2005. The second novel of his political thriller trilogy, The Report to the Judiciary, was published in 2008. A Vietnam Veteran and West Pointer, he was inducted into the U.S Army Ranger Hall of Fame. When not recalled to the Federal Bench, Judge Sullivan is a partner in a Washington law firm.

Jaume Subirana was born and lives in Barcelona. He is a writer, critic and translator who has published both prose and poetry (he has won the most prestigious Catalan awards: Carles Riba in 1988 and recently the Gabriel Ferrater), and has also written and edited books on Barcelona and Catalan culture. He served as director of the Institució de les Lletres Catalanes, and is a member of PEN Català. Associate Professor at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, he has been Visiting Professor at UBC, Brown University and Ca’ Foscari-Venezia. He regularly updates his blog Flux. Photo Credit: Victor P. deObanos

Kapka Kassabova is a poet, novelist, and writer of travel and history. Her travel memoirs are Street Without a Name (2008) and Twelve Minutes of Love, a tango story (2011). Born and raised in Bulgaria, she moved with her family to New Zealand in the early 1990s, where she published her first fiction and poetry. She now lives in the Highlands of Scotland. She has written for The Guardian, Vogue, and 1843 magazine. Her latest book is Border: a journey to the edge of Europe (2017). Photo Credit: Marti Friedlander.

Katy Derbyshire was born in London and has lived in Berlin for the past twenty years. She translates contemporary German writers, including previously Dublin Literary Award longlisted Simon Urban and Helene Hegemann along with Inka Parei, Clemens Meyer, Jan Brandt, Felicitas Hoppe and many others. She writes occasional criticism and essays in English and German, published by Lithub, The Quarterly Conversation, Music & Literature, New Books in German and Der Tagesspiegel. Katy co-hosts a monthly literary translation lab in Berlin and has taught translation in London, Leipzig, New York, New Delhi and Norwich. Photo Credit: Anja Pietsch