2008 judges
The judges for the 2008 Penguin / Orange Broadband Readers' Group Prize are:
Nicci Gerrard (chair)
is a novelist and journalist. For many years she worked on the Observer newspaper, first as a literary editor, and then as a feature writer and reviewer. With her husband, Sean French, she writes best-selling psychological thrillers under the name of Nicci French and she also writes solo novels. She has four children and lives in Suffolk.
Clare Chandler
is a writer and has worked as an editor in children's publishing. She has been a member of a book group for fifteen years and is co-director of www.bookgoup.info (link opens in a new window) – the independent website for reading groups.
Karen Cunningham
has been Head of Libraries in Glasgow since November 2002, with responsibility for 34 Community Libraries and Real Learning Centres across the City and the Mitchell Library. She was a judge on the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2004 and is also Director of Aye Write! The Bank of Scotland Book Festival.
Dymphna Flynn
is the producer of Radio 4’s Bookclub. She grew up in a house surrounded by books, and went to the library every Saturday with her father. She joined the BBC over twenty-two years ago. In 1998, after moving to Brighton and having a child, she decided to set up a book group. Her enthusiasm for her book group and literature landed her what she says is the best job on the planet: producing BBC Radio 4’s Bookclub, where she works with leading authors, reads a book a week, and meets members of book groups from all round the country. Her book group still meets every five weeks in a café in Hove.
Jenny Hartley
is the author of The Reading Groups Book (OUP 2002), the first full study of reading groups. She teaches courses about reading patterns and behaviour at Roehampton University, where she is Professor of English Literature. She is currently a member of four reading groups, two of them inside prison. It's the unpredictability of reading groups which fascinates Jenny: in both what they read and how they do it. Her next book, Charles Dickens and the House of Fallen Women, will be published later this year.
Jo James
is Events and Local Marketing Manager, Waterstone’s. She worked for Ottakars Bookshops, as events manager and, following, the merger with Waterstones in 2006, she now heads up the award winning events team at Waterstone's.
Many of the Waterstone's stores run reading groups, with some running multiple genre groups as well. Jo has been heavily involved in helping to get authors and reading groups together, and in advocating reading groups throughout the stores.
Jenny Hartley
Nicci Gerrard
Clare Chandler
Karen Cunningham
Dymphna Flynn
