The Folio Society, a publisher of slipcased and illustrated editions of fiction and nonfiction books, has become the title sponsor of the Literature Prize, which will be renamed the Folio Prize.
The inaugural Folio Prize will be awarded, along with £40,000 (almost $60,000), in March 2014, to "recognize and celebrate the best English-language fiction from around the world, published in the United Kingdom in any given year regardless of form, genre or the author's country of origin." The first judges panel will be revealed this summer, while the shortlist of nominees will be released in February 2014. Each year the Folio Society will publish a hardcover, illustrated special edition of the winning title.
"The Folio Society pays loving and meticulous attention to the books they publish--their edition of The Handmaid's Tale is now definitive," said Margaret Atwood. "I'm sure the Folio Prize will be of equally high quality: much needed in a world in which money is increasingly becoming the measure of all things."
Philip Pullman added, "I have always admired the Folio Society's dedication to the book as a physical object, and I think their generous sponsorship of this new prize is a recognition that while literature can become manifest in many different forms, the book--the codex--is at the heart of what we understand literature to be."
The Folio Prize Academy will include more than 100 writers and critics and will help decide which titles are nominated for the prize. The panel of judges will be pulled from among the Academy's members. The panel will consist of three judges from the U.K. and two from elsewhere in the world, and there will be no more than three judges of the same gender.