Become an SI Leeds Literary Prize reader
The SI Leeds Literary Prize is a biennial award and as part of our programme, we also run a Readers’ Choice Award alongside the main prize. This award is chosen by a team of volunteer readers from different backgrounds, who read each of our shortlisted manuscripts and vote for their favourite.
Previous Readers’ Choice Award winners include Kit de Waal, Laura Fish and Jamilah Ahmed.
Judging for our 2024 Readers’ Choice Award is currently underway, but we are always happy to hear from readers. If you or your book group would like to be part of our reader team, please email audience@sileedsliteraryprize.com.
As part of our prize programme, we organise author events and talks. If you are part of a group or venue who would be interested in organising an author talk or scheduling a book by one of our writers as your reading choice, get in touch and we would be happy to talk to you. Please email info@sileedsliteraryprize.com.
What is involved?
We share the shortlisted manuscripts with the volunteer judges who take part in the SI Readers’ Choice Award and ask them to read a minimum of 50 pages of each book, to get a flavour of the story and the writing style, before ranking them in order of preference.
All reading is done electronically and scores are submitted online. Each reader can choose to leave written comments for our shortlisted writers if they would like to, but this is optional. The reading window usually runs for around six weeks in the autumn of each prize year.
Terms and conditions
Readers must agree to the following terms in order to take part:
- They are over 18 years of age
- They understand that this is a volunteer position
- They understand that copyright of each manuscript remains with the author and they will not copy, save or share their work; upload it to any websites; or use AI tools to assist with the reading and judging process; and they will delete all manuscripts from their device(s) once the judging process is complete
- They will not share details of their manuscript choices or feedback online while the judging process is underway
