Bill Bryson to chair Wellcome Book Prize judges

30.09.14 | Sarah Shaffi - The Bookseller

Author Bill Bryson will chair the judging panel for the Wellcome Book Prize 2015.
Bryson will be joined on the panel by Mark Haddon, author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (Vintage); BBC presenter Razia Iqbal; barrister and broadcaster Baroness Helena Kennedy QC; and Uta Frith DBE, emeritus professor of cognitive development at UCL (University College London).

The Wellcome Book Prize, worth £30,000, awards the best book, fiction or non-fiction, published in the UK with a medical theme.

Bryson, author of books including One Summer: America 1927 (Doubleday), said: “I am naturally honoured and excited to be taking part in the Wellcome Book Prize, and am especially excited to be working with such a distinguished panel of judges.”

Ken Arnold, head of public programmes at Wellcome Collection, said: “We are thrilled to announce this panel of exceptionally talented judges for the 2015 Wellcome Book Prize. They have an enormously exciting and stimulating task ahead, as they seek out books that reward curiosity, inspire debate, move as well as challenge the ways in which we imagine ourselves and the world we inhabit.”

This year’s prize was won by Andrew Solomon’s Far From the Tree: Parents, Children and the Search