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SI Leeds Literary Prize is looking for volunteer readers to get involved in the SI Readers’ Choice Award 2026!

The SI Readers’ Choice Award sits alongside the main prize, and sees a team of volunteers read six shortlisted manuscripts and choose their favourite. This not only gives shortlisted writers another opportunity to win, but it also means they get the chance to receive feedback from real readers, which they can go on to use when editing their work.

As judging for the main prize is now underway, they are looking for volunteers who would like to be part of the SI Readers’ Choice Award team and help select the 2026 winner.

The prize is awarded to unpublished fiction written by UK-based Black and Asian women and has been running since 2012. The 2024 SI Readers’ Choice winner, Maeve Clarke, will see her award-winning novel, A Handful of Nutmeg, published by Fly on the Wall Press in June 2027.

Reading will take place from the end of September and volunteers will be asked to vote for their preferred choice by mid-November. All reading is done electronically. This means a lot of reading but you don’t need to read each manuscript from start to finish, they ask you read a minimum of 50 pages from each.