Meet the Judges of the 2024 BookLife Prize Fiction Contest

Five guest authors and industry professionals selected the finalists for the 2024 BookLife Prize Fiction Contest. Stay tuned for the announcement of the grand prize winner in December and a Q&A with each of the finalists. With that, let's meet the judges!

 

Kathe Koja is an accomplished author of speculative fiction novels, short fiction, and a producer of live and virtual events. Koja received a starred review for Catherine the Ghost, which PW called a "brilliant retelling" of Wuthering Heights [that] whisks readers to the wild English moors but shifts the focus from romantic relationships to a familial one." Koja selected Harriet's Escape by N.D. Jones as the finalist for the Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Horror category of the contest. 

 

 

The common thread in my novels and short fiction is always about making. My characters create sketchbooks (The Blue Mirror) and live performances (Skin), risque puppet shows (the Under the Poppy trilogy) and poetry that's meant to open minds (Christopher Wild), and a danceclub that reaches into infinity (the Dark Factory project). I believe humans are intrinsically makers, and we're happiest when we're making art, or food, or a garden, or a lesson plan—or a novel.

 

 

Opening ourselves to the world is always a risk. Anyone who works hard on a piece of writing has invested a lot of themselves into that work. But if you know you've done the best work you can do, that means you're giving your best to the world, and that calls for celebration, not fear! Once a piece of writing is out in the world, it belongs to the readers to accept or, yes, reject, as they will. We write for them, after all.

 

As for bad reviews, I've had some true ass-kickers through the years, but my ass remains at the desk, every day, doing my work. 

 

 

Our senses are our true anchor to the world, so I always rely on sensory details. The things that characters can see, the tactile environment they move through, the blunt or subtle power of smell and taste, to anchor them to their own world, no matter where it might be—fantastical, historical, or contemporary. Sense details make that world so much more available to readers, so much richer to experience and explore.

 

I'm such a fan of sense details that I offer immersive fiction workshops for writers. I recently led an exercise using a bowl of water, a bag of Jolly Ranchers, a dry leaf, and an old piece of jewelry to showcase the power of the senses and our ability as writers to observe, describe, and enrich our work with details. It's pretty magical in action!

 

 

My largest worldbuilding fiction project, Dark Factory. So far it exists in two novels, Dark Factory and Dark Park, with a third coming in late 2025, Dark Matter. They’re all interwoven with a website that loops through, delves into, and expands the story of that club at the edge of infinity, where reality is a party, a game, and an endless night on the dancefloor. At the heart of this world is its invitation to other artists—visual artists, musicians, a scent creator, a VR master—to come and play with the concept and keep it going, and growing. It's been a wild, beautiful ride so far, and we're nowhere near done.

 

 

Ryan Graudin is the author of speculative fiction, fantasy, and sci-fi novels for young readers. In a starred review, PW called The Enchanted Lies of Celeste Artois, "an effervescent fantasy." Graudin selected Eat and Get Gas by J.A. Wright as the finalist for the YA/Middle Grade category. 

 

 

I majored in creative writing both in high school and college. All my teachers discouraged genre writing, urging us to focus instead on a more literary short story style. This was always a huge frustration for me, because as a reader, it was magic that always pulled me into a story. I didn't want to write about sad middle-aged white men going through divorces. I wanted sentient castles, talking cats, and enchanted mirrors. 

 

After I graduated I returned to speculative fiction. Fantasy has always been my first love, but I've also dabbled in science-fiction and alternate history. My two recent books: The Girl Who Kept the Castle and The Enchanted Lies of Céleste Artois are the most fantastical things I've written so far. I approached the magical worldbuilding by incorporating anything that brought me copious amounts of joy, such as the compost dragon in The Girl Who Kept the Castle. The thought of a vegetarian dragon eating the castle's kitchen scraps and growing trees from his back was just so much fun! I also loved writing about Wizard West's magical wardrobe, filled with robes sewn out of storm clouds and flying tiger slippers. Oh, and the magical pastries were exciting to create! I only wish I could actually eat a puff dragon filled with molten cream instead of just imagining one.

 

 

Voice is crucial for me. If a character has an authentic, magnetic voice, then even a slower plot can become mesmerizing. The inverse is true, too. If the novel's voice falls flat, then there are no number of explosions and plot twists that can salvage it. The best of both worlds, of course, is a book with lyrical prose and a gripping plot. I would cite any of Laini Taylor's books as exceptional examples of such writing.

 

 

The same way I would go about authentically capturing an adult's perspective—by remembering what it felt like to be young and have an endless horizon of possibilities ahead! It also helps that most of my books don't have a contemporary setting. I avoid using modern slang or technology in my stories, as they age quickly; by the time a book is published, the language may already feel outdated.

 

Being a mother has also been a great reminder of how young people see the world. I love rediscovering things through the eyes of my daughters.

 

 

Oh, yes! History has always been a huge inspiration for me. Like many millennials, I was fascinated by events like the Titanic disaster and the tragic end of the Romanov family, both of which eventually made their way into my novels. History offers such a wealth of strange, almost magical facts—stories that seem too fantastical to be true.

 

One of my favorite discoveries came from my research for The Enchanted Lies of Céleste Artois, which is set in 1913/1914. While immersing myself in the Belle Époque and World War I, I stumbled upon the story of the Duchess d'Uzès, who hosted a fête at her Parisian palace in the winter of 1914. She passed out fantasy-colored wigs as favors to her guests, who spent the party bedecked with pink, purple, green, blue, and orange hair. A photographer was present to capture these scenes, and the images, published in L'Illustration, went viral for the time, sparking a global craze for fantasy-colored wigs—from London to New York to Sydney. I found the idea of women sporting pink hair over a century ago so irresistible that I made it a major plot point in Enchanted Lies.

 

I love finding fascinating details and weaving them into my stories. I love using magic and science fiction to explore themes from certain eras of history that wouldn't be possible otherwise. My young adult novel Wolf By Wolf is set in an alternate World War II timeline. By introducing "skin-shifting"—the ability of the main character to mimic others' appearances—I could delve deeply into the politics of identity, especially in the context of Hitler's warped racial ideologies.

 

I also just love to research. I know. I'm strange. :)

 

 

Up next, the sequel to my recent middle-grade novel The Girl Who Kept the Castle will be hitting shelves next fall! I'm also hard at work churning out my next adult project. 

 

James R. Benn is an author of historical mysteries, including the Billy Boyle World War II Mystery Series. PW called Rag and Bone "stellar" in a starred review. Benn selected Death of the Ice Angel by J.C. Ceron as the finalist for the mystyery/thriller category. 

 

 

Billy’s voice came to me unexpectedly. When I sat down to write the first lines of the first book, he started talking in the first person. I had no intention of doing that, but he let me know from the get-go how it was going to be. He emerged from some corner of my consciousness, and the smartest thing I did was to just let it happen. 

 

As his voice gained traction, so did the books. That left me with a decision to make: Was he going to continue to be a brash, wise-cracking Yank, or was the war going to sober him? I believe there are basically two flavors of protagonists in fiction. The first propels himself through the narrative, changing the fictional world and emerging intact and unchanged himself. The second journeys through the story and reaches his climatic destination changed by the world he has experienced. Billy is in the latter category, which is tough on him, since his universe is that of the Second World War.

 

As Ava Max tells us in her hit song "Choose Your Fighter" from the Barbie soundtrack:

 

Choose your fighter

Choose your fighter

Wings of a butterfly, eyes of a tiger

Whatever you want, baby, choose your fighter

 

Decide what you want in a protagonist and choose your fighter well.

 

 

Character, character, character. Of course there must be high stakes. An opening that draws the reader in. A setting that provides its own layer of fascination. You need a villain, an antagonist who is rich in their own motivation and beliefs. Even a villain is a hero in their own story. But for me, character is the dominant element. A character we root for, care about, cleave to. A person through whose eyes we see the world in a light we never would have considered; a prism of understanding.

 

 

This is the tricky bit. I spend a lot of time finding the right historical events to anchor the fictional mystery, especially those that reveal lesser-known aspects of the war. My goal is to align my characters’ lives with these events and historical figures, creating a story that intertwines fact and fiction in a way that feels authentic to both. It’s essential that your protagonist reacts in ways that are true to their established personality. Only then will they feel genuinely connected to the historical events they experience.

 

 

Next year will see the twentieth Billy Boyle novel—Bitter Wind—a definite milestone in Billy’s life and my own. I was excited to discover that Jean Conan Doyle (daughter of Sir Arthur) was an RAF intelligence officer during World War II. How could I not invite her to the party? Right now, I’m working on The Ninth Circle for 2026, which features Commander Ian Fleming, and I’m having a lot of fun inserting Bondian references along the way. I had never realized just how deeply rooted the Bond stories are in WWII. There are still surprises as I conduct my research, and I’m always excited about what comes next.

 

Celestine Martin is the author of supernatural romantic comedies, including the Elemental Love series. PW praised her "whimsical worldbuilding" and had this to say about Deja Brew: "The magic element energizes the story, while the sizzling romance captivates. This hits the spot." Martin selected Flipping the Birdie by S.L. Woeppel as the finalist for the Romance/Erotica category. 

 

 

I was inspired to write the Elemental Love series due to my family's folklore and stories. Rumor has it my great-grandmother could see ghosts, and my grandmother believed in Southern-based superstitions. I grew up at the Jersey Shore and my family has lived there since the 1920s. We’ve always been interested in mystical and magical stories. 

 

I was also inspired to write the series because I was feeling homesick for my Shore town. I wanted to write a unique world that felt like home to me where witches could freely roam, cast spells, and fall in love with mermen, fae, and magicians.  

 

 

Yes, my characters do surprise me! The character who surprised me the most was Ursula. I planned for her to be a foil character to Lucy in Witchful Thinking. As I completed the final revisions, Ursula became a more complex character. Through her evolving relationship with magic and her desire to find a happy ending in Kiss and Spell, she transforms from a stylish brat into a passionate and determined witch. So far, she's been my favorite heroine I've written, and Kiss and Spell is a reader favorite.

 

 

What it means to live ‘happily ever after’ and ‘happily for now' endings have changed greatly since fairy tales were first written many generations ago. I want to make sure that my readers see in my romances that there are different ways to live happily ever after. A happy ending may not include a wedding or a baby on the way, but it might be build a life filled with love and joy and creating a supportive community.

 

 

I want to take my readers away from the seaside magic of Freya Grove, New Jersey, and introduce them to a brand new world of enchanted woods and hidden gardens. I can’t say much about my next planned book series, but readers can expect a spellbinding romance to make them want to root for the main couple to fall in love in the best way.

 

Sophia Stewart is the editor of The Millions and a news editor at Publishers Weekly. Stewart chose Helen Bonaparte by Sarah D'Stair as the finalist in the General Fiction category.

 

 

As traditional publishers become less willing to take risks, and commercial fiction dominates the market, I see self-publishing as one avenue for nurturing and promoting experimental literature.

 

 

My reading interests skew heavily toward literary nonfiction, and nearly all my favorite books fall into that category; they share a clarity of thought, intellectual rigor, crystalline prose, emotional honesty, and an openness toward complexity and ambiguity.  

 

 

There is no single formula, or path, or blueprint for a successful, fulfilling writing career. My advice would be to find community where you can, and to take stock if the writing process starts to feel like a means to an end, rather than a worthy and rewarding endeavor in itself. I’m working on a book project right now, and I periodically ask myself: Would I still be writing this if I knew it would never be published? We all want our work to be released into the world, to find its readers, but we also shouldn’t write only for the sake of publication. That you believe in the value of what you’re doing, regardless of external validation, is what matters most.

 

 

Reading great writing. Our world is oversaturated with words—mostly slop—cluttering our feeds and our inboxes and our minds. But the rare gems—the essays that capture writers thinking on the page and challenge our own thinking, the novels that conjure indelible characters and emotional universes—remind me that this whole writing thing is still worth doing. Books won’t save the world, or even necessarily change it, but they can profoundly enrich and expand our lives. And although it’s unprecedently difficult to cut through a crowded and noisy marketplace, if a great book can improve the life of just one reader, that’s a victory.

 

The Minneapolis-based small publisher Coffee House Press used to have a slogan: “Literature is not the same thing as publishing.” No matter the state of the industry, or the book trend du jour, literature endures. Or put another way, this time from Toni Morrison: “We do language. That may be the measure of our lives.”