British-Nigerian poet Theresa Lola has been selected as part of the judging panel for the 2027 Women’s Prize for Fiction. The Women’s Prize Trust announced that scholar, critic, and editor Merve Emre will chair the panel. Lola joins broadcaster and podcast host Charlotte Collins (Editor-in-Chief of SheerLuxe), novelist and playwright Esther Freud, and novelist Eimear McBride. The panel will choose a longlist of sixteen, a shortlist of six, and one winner, who receives £30,000 and a bronze statuette called the “Bessie.”

For Brittle Paper readers, this feels like a full-circle moment. Lola was born in Lagos and moved to London at thirteen. Long before the Women’s Prize came calling, we were publishing her work. Her poems “Portrait of Us as Snow White”appeared on the site in 2017, and when she became a joint winner of the 2018 Brunel International African Poetry Prize, we shared “Psalm 151” with readers. That same year, she was among the finalists whose poems we reviewed in our Brunel Prize Poems Review Series. Her debut collection, In Search of Equilibrium, made our list of Notable African Books of 2019, the same year she was named Young People’s Laureate for London.

Her second collection, Ceremony for the Nameless, drew on Yoruba naming ceremonies to explore belonging, family, history, and what it means to hold a dual Nigerian-British identity. We covered it when it was announced. Last year, it was shortlisted for the Walcott Prize, and in October it was named joint winner of the 2025 Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry. Recently, she was also long listed for the Nigeria Prize for Literature.

The 2027 Women’s Prize for Fiction is now underway. The prize recognizes original, accessible, excellent novels written in English by women and published in the UK, and it is judged on those three tenets of excellence, originality, and accessibility. The longlist will be announced on 10 March 2027 and the shortlist on 28 April. The winners of the Women’s Prizes for Fiction and Non-Fiction will be revealed on 17 June at the Women’s Prize Trust’s summer party in Bedford Square Gardens, London. Writers, publishers, and readers can find eligibility details, the judging process, and past winners on the Women’s Prize for Fiction page. Authors cannot enter themselves. The process begins when UK publishers submit eligible books, so if you have a qualifying novel, talk to your publisher.

Congratulations to Theresa Lola, and we look forward to seeing what the panel chooses.