judges:
The judging committee consists of four judges, three of them appointed annually, the prize Director is the Chair. A long-list is announced in December, a shortlist the following January, and the winner in February
2026
David Bolt is the Professor of Disability Studies and Interdisciplinarity at Liverpool Hope University, where he is Director of the Centre for Culture and Disability Studies and Programme Lead on the Disability Studies MA. He is Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies and the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Disability Studies. He is Book Series Editor of Routledge's Autocritical Disability Studies and Joint Editor of Springer's Literary Disability Studies and Bloomsbury's A Cultural History of Disability. He is also author and editor of a range of academic books.
Letty McHugh is an artist and writer based in West Yorkshire, she is currently researching what healing practices in medieval monasteries can teach her about living with chronic illness today. In 2023 her self-published artists book Book of Hours, a collection of poetry and lyric essays won the Barbellion Prize for Literature and was featured on BBC Radio Fours Front Row. Her installation Anchorage, a reimagining of a medieval hermitage for the modern-day sick artist was shown at Attenborough Arts Centre, Leicester in her first solo show.
A genre-defying writer focused on identity, difference and what makes us human, Penny writes stories we haven’t heard, making others see life differently, with provocation, humour and wisdom. She is passionate that disabled women are heard. Find out more at Penny's website.
2022
Dr Emmeline Burdett - is a writer, translator and academic who gained her PhD from University College London in 2011. Since then she has published various book chapters on Disability Studies related subjects, such as eugenics, modern critical responses to Stefan Zweig’s 1939 novel Ungeduld des Herzens (translated as Beware of Pity), and disablist insults within the Brexit debate. She is a co-editor of the blog journal Public Disability History. She has recently submitted a manuscript about the Nazi ‘euthanasia’ programme and its influence on Anglo-US debates to a publisher and the manuscript is currently out for peer-review. She has also published several short stories. She has spina bifida and is a wheelchair-user.
Lynn Buckle is a deaf author, artist, and tutor living in Ireland. Her second novel What Willow Says, published by époque press, previously won The Barbellion Prize (2021). Other publications include The Groundsmen, What Meets the Eye; The Deaf Perspective, Imagining the City, Infinite Possibilities, Brigid, various literary articles, and reviews. She was awarded a John Hewitt Society Bursary, Greywood Arts Carers’ Residency, shortlisted for Red Line Short Story Competition, and represented Ireland as a UNESCO City of Literature Writer in Residence at the UK National Centre for Writing. She hosts the Irish Climate Writers at The Irish Writers’ Centre, interviewing authors, NGOs, and politicians on climate action and encouraging writers of all genres to include positive climate solutions in their fiction.
Ray Davis is an independent scholar and essayist who has made occasional appearances across a range of academic and non-academic venues. He publishes work by himself and others at https://www.pseudopodium.org/repress/, including the complete writings of W. N. P. Barbellion.
2021
Eleanor Franzen is a writer, critic, and bookseller. Her current project is a medical memoir about Type 1 diabetes, disordered eating, and 21st-century feminism. She was diagnosed with T1D at the age of three. She lives in north London with seven plants, hundreds of books, and one very patient housemate.
Jake Goldsmith - is the founder and director of The Barbellion Prize. He has cystic fibrosis, Type 1 diabetes, autism, and a list of other chronic health conditions. He is an author primarily interested in the phenomenology of illness and intellectual history, particularly the work of Raymond Aron, Albert Camus, and Manès Sperber. He lives in Suffolk.
Karl Knights is an autistic freelance journalist with cerebral palsy. His poems and prose have appeared in The Guardian, The Dark Horse, The Huffington Post, and elsewhere. He lives in Suffolk.
2020
Dr Shahd Alshammari is an Assistant Professor of Literature. She earned her PhD at the University of Kent (UK). She currently teaches in Kuwait. Her research interests include disability and gender studies, and women’s illness narratives. She is the author of Notes on the Flesh (2017, Faraxa Press) and has appeared at various literary festivals. Alshammari was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis many years ago and continues to raise awareness about MS and invisible illnesses in the Middle East. It’s important for her that all disability is acknowledged and made visible.
Cat Mitchell is a Lecturer and is the Programme Leader of the Writing and Publishing degree at the University of Derby. Before working in academia, she worked in publishing, including four years in various marketing and publicity roles at Penguin Random House UK. She has multiple chronic conditions including Fibromyalgia, and has a particular research interest in working conditions for disabled employees and authors in the publishing industry. As of 2021, Cat Mitchell is acting in a Publicity role for The Barbellion Prize, helping to facilitate contact with the publishing industry and marketing.
Jake Goldsmith is the founder and director of The Barbellion Prize. He has cystic fibrosis, Type 1 diabetes, autism, and a list of other chronic health conditions. He is an author primarily interested in the phenomenology of illness and intellectual history, particularly the work of Raymond Aron, Albert Camus, and Manès Sperber. He lives in Suffolk.