Award-winning author Geoff Dyer named on the Goldsmiths Prize 2014 judging panel

The judges have been announced for the Goldsmiths Prize 2014 - the literary prize created by Goldsmiths, University of London, in association with the New Statesman, to reward boldly original fiction.

The four judges for this year's £10,000 Prize are authors Geoff Dyer (right) and Kirsty Gunn, New Statesman Culture Editor Tom Gatti and Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Goldsmiths Francis Spufford, who will chair the panel.

The annual Prize, which is open to novels written by authors from the UK or the Republic of Ireland, is awarded to a book that is deemed genuinely novel and which embodies the spirit of invention that characterises the genre at its best.

Geoff Dyer, whose published work has won numerous literary awards, commented: "This is a much-needed prize rewarding  innovation, originality and daring."

The Prize was launched last year and received widespread critical acclaim for celebrating rewarding fiction that breaks the mould or opens up new possibilities for the novel form.

In some quarters the Goldsmiths Prize was hailed as the natural successor to the Man Booker, after the latter expanded to allow American authors to enter.

Chair of judges Francis Spufford commented: "For me the best boundary is the most elastic one, and the most interesting literary territory is the most contested. I look forward to seeing what new material and new techniques the novel stretches to engulf in the Goldsmiths submissions for 2014."

Tom Gatti added: "The New Statesman has long been home to daring writing, from Virginia Woolf to Will Self - so we are delighted to be continuing our partnership with the Goldsmiths Prize, a rare opportunity to celebrate audacity and invention in British fiction."

The 2014 Prize will be officially launched at Goldsmiths on 29 January when last year's winner Eimear McBride will return to read from her winning novel A Girl Is A Half-formed Thing, as part of an event organised by The Goldsmiths Writers' Centre and the New Statesman.

Speaking after being crowned winner of the inaugural Goldsmiths Prize in October 2013, McBride said: "To have a prize like this is a really wonderful thing to encourage writers to be adventurous, to continue to be adventurous, to encourage publishers to be adventurous, and readers to be adventurous."

The Prize is officially open for 2014 submissions today (Friday).

 For more details about the Goldsmiths Prize 2014, visit the official website or follow @GoldsmithsPrize on Twitter.

Key dates for the Goldsmiths Prize 2014:

24 January - Prize open for submissions
29 January - Goldsmiths Prize 2013 winner Eimear McBride returns to Goldsmiths 
28 March - closing date for submission of entry forms
4 July - closing date for submission of finished books
1 October - shortlist announced
12 November - winner announced

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Notes to editors:

Founded in 1891, Goldsmiths, University of London is an institution with a rich academic history known for its creative approach. Its 8,000-plus students are based on campus in the heart of south east London’s New Cross community, studying undergraduate, postgraduate, teacher training and return-to-study courses in subjects covering the arts, social sciences, humanities and computing.

As a member of The 1994 Group of research-intensive universities and most recently ranked 9th in the UK for world-leading 4* research (Research Assessment Exercise 2008), Goldsmiths was also named in the UK’s top 10 in two categories of The Complete University Guide – ‘Art & Design’ and ‘Communication & Media Studies’. 

About the New Statesman:

The New Statesman is an award-winning weekly politics and culture magazine which celebrated its centenary in 2013. The NS has published writers such as H G Wells, John Maynard Keynes, Bertrand Russell, Julian Barnes, Virginia Woolf and Christopher Hitchens. Current contributors include John Gray, Laurie Penny and Mehdi Hasan.

Guest editors of the NS have included Rowan Williams, Ai WeiWei and Richard Dawkins. The most recent guest editor was Russell Brand, whose best-selling “Revolution” issue – and the BBC Newsnight interview Brand gave to introduce it – became a global internet sensation with 9 million YouTube hits.

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