Nigerian novelist Oyinkan Braithwaite and Ghanaian author and filmmaker Yaba Badoe are on the judging panel of The British Book Awards.

The British Book Awards, fondly dubbed the “Nibbies,” are administered by the book trade magazine The Bookseller. Each year, the magazine awards prizes for Books of the Year in several categories. For 2021, Braithwaite is on the panel of the category Book of the Year — Fiction: Crime & Thriller. Badoe is on the panel for the category Book of the Year — Children’s Illustrated and Non-Fiction.

Braithwaite is no stranger to the Nibbies. Last year, her debut novel, a comic crime thriller, My Sister, The Serial Killer won the 2020 British Book Award for Crime Fiction Book of the Year.

Badoe’s short stories have been published in Critical Quarterly and African Love Stories: An Anthology, edited by Ama Ata Aidoo. In 2009 her debut novel, True Murder, was published by Jonathan Cape. She has also published two YA novels: A Jigsaw of Fire and Stars, which was shortlisted for the Branford Boase Award and nominated for the CILIP Carnegie Award in 2018, and Wolf Light, which was published in 2019.

Go here to see the full line-up of judges.