Judges' biographies

Nury Vittachi is a Sri Lanka-born author now living in Hong Kong. He is published around the world in multiple languages, with his best known work being the comedy-crime series The Feng Shui Detective (published by Allen and Unwin in Australia).  

Vittachi is also a literary catalyst as founding editor of the Asia Literary Review, Asia’s top journal of prose and poetry. He plays a key role in several of Asia’s literary festivals and conceptualised the Man Asian Literary Prize.  

Vittachi is one of Asia’s most popular journalists, his newspaper columns are syndicated in Asia and attract an audience of more than one million readers. They are printed, monthly, weekly and even daily in some countries.

He is known for his over-active wit and once told an interviewer: “My first book did not win the Vogel, my second failed to win the Booker, and I am hoping to make a clean sweep by not winning the Pulitzer next year.”

Kamila Shamsie is the author of five novels, including Kartography, Broken Verses and Burnt Shadows (forthcoming), which have publishers in 17 countries. Three of her novels have received awards from the Pakistan Academy of Letters and she has been shortlisted for the Liberaturpreis (Germany) and twice for the John Llewellyn Rhys award (U.K). 

She has written for various publications including The Guardian, Prospect, New Statesman, TLS, The Telegraph (all U.K), DAWN and Newsline (Pakistan), The Daily Star (Bangladesh) and The New York Times (U.S), and is on the editorial board of the Index on Censorship. 

She has been a judge for the Orange Award for New Writing, the Guardian First Book Award, and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Award. She grew up in Karachi, went to university in America and now lives in London.

Peter Craven is one of Australia's best known literary critics. He was one of the founding editors of Scripsi, a literary magazine that published Australian and international writing. He went on to be the first editor of Best Australian Essays, Best Australian Stories and Best Australian Poems. 

He has written a considerable body of literary criticism over the last couple of decades on every aspect of contemporary writing as well as the literature of the past. His essays have appeared in such publications as The Sunday Age, Australian Financial Review, The Australian, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.

Peter Craven has also been a theatre and television critic, as well as writing pieces for both the Murdoch and the Fairfax press. He appeared on every telecast of the arts program The Vulture and co-hosts Sunday morning Melbourne radio with Helen Razer. 

Craven is sometimes described as a culture critic and his range is arguably broader than anyone else's in the country, however, by his own admission, literature remains his first love.