THE JUDGES
Michael Laskey (Chairman), Stephen Knight, Carole Satyamurti.
Michael Laskey was co-founder of the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival and Director for its first ten years and he is founding editor of Smiths Knoll. He has published three collections, including The Tightrope Wedding which was shortlisted for the T S Eliot Prize and, most recently, Permission to Breathe (2004).
Stephen Knight won the National Poetry Competition in 1992 and has published two collections and a novel. His book for children Sardines and Other Poems was published in 2004. He teaches creative writing at City Lit, Goldsmith's and Glamorgan University.
Carole Satyamurti won the National Poetry Competition in 1986 and has published five collections, most recently Stitching the Dark, New & Selected Poems (2005). She teaches at the Tavistock Clinic in London and runs poetry courses in Venice and Corfu and for the Poetry School.
FUNDING
The Jerwood Aldeburgh First Collection Prize is funded by the Jerwood Charity. The Jerwood Charity is dedicated to responsible and imaginative funding of the arts, education in its widest sense, design, and other areas of human endeavour. In the field of literature it supports, among other things, Jerwood New Playwrights at the Royal Court, Jerwood First Film Shorts, First Development, Critical & Creative Writing Courses at Cove Park, the Jerwood/Arvon Young Writers’ Apprenticeships, the Jerwood Collections Centre at The Wordsworth Trust and The Royal Society of Literature / Jerwood Awards for Non-Fiction.
