2019 Judges

Roy Foster (Chair) is Emeritus Professor of Irish History at Oxford and Professor of Irish History and Literature at Queen Mary University of London. He is the author of many prizewinning books, including Modern Ireland 1600-1972, Paddy and Mr Punch, The Irish Story, Luck and the Irish, the two-volume authorised biography of W.B.Yeats, and most recently Vivid Faces: the revolutionary generation in Ireland 1890-1923. He is also a well-known cultural commentator and critic.

Nicholas Grene is Emeritus Professor of English Literature at Trinity College Dublin and a Member of the Royal Irish Academy. His books include The Politics of Irish Drama (Cambridge University Press, 1999), Shakespeare’s Serial History Plays (Cambridge University Press, 2002), Yeats's Poetic Codes (Oxford University Press, 2008), Home on the Stage (Cambridge University Press, 2014), Oxford Handbook of Modern Irish Theatre, (co-edited with Chris Morash), (Oxford University Press, 2016), and The Theatre of Tom Murphy: Playwright Adventurer (Bloomsbury, 2017).  He is currently working on a book about farming in modern Irish literature.

Eva Hoffman grew up in Cracow, Poland, before emigrating in her teens to Canada and then the United States. After receiving her Ph.D. in literature from Harvard University, she worked as senior editor and literary critic at The New York Times, and has taught at various British and American universities. Her books, which have been translated widely, include Lost in Translation, Exit Into History, After Such Knowledge and Time, as well as two novels, The Secret and Illuminations.  She has written and presented programmes for BBC Radio and has lectured internationally on subjects of exile, historical memory, cross-cultural relations and other contemporary issues. Her awards include the Guggenheim Fellowship, Whiting Award for Writing, an award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and Prix Italia for Radio.  She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and holds an honorary doctorate from Warwick University.  She is currently a Visiting Professor at UCL and lives in London.