We have a fine line-up of experts in place ready to judge the best new books about Norfolk, Suffolk and Fenland.

We have a fine line-up of experts in place ready to judge the best new books about Norfolk, Suffolk and Fenland. They are...

Poetry

Lavinia Greenlaw runs the poetry MA course at UEA, where she is a professor of creative writing. She has published three collections of poetry: Night Photograph (1993), A World Where News Travelled Slowly (1997) and Minsk (2003), which was shortlisted for the T S Eliot, Forward and Whitbread Poetry Prizes. Her first novel, Mary George of Allnorthover, was published in 2001 and has appeared in the Netherlands, the United States, Germany and France, where it won the Prix du Premier Roman Etranger. A second novel, An Irresponsible Age, appeared in 2006 and her memoir, The Importance of Music to Girls, was published in 2007.

History and Tradition

Steve Snelling is a respected military historian and former editor of the EDP Sunday supplement. He worked for the EDP and Norwich Evening News for more than 35 years, during which time he gained a strong following for his deeply researched and always thoroughly readable features about Norfolk people's involvement in the two world wars. He also oversaw the EDP's transition from being a broadsheet to tabloid-sized newspaper. He is currently writing a history of the Baedeker raids on Norwich during the Second World War. Previous books include Over Here: The Americans in Norfolk During World War II and Images of Norwich. He has also contributed three volumes in the VCs of the First World War series which are in the process of being revised and reissued.

Biography and Memoir

Kathryn Hughes is professor of life-writing at UEA. She was educated at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, and holds a PhD in Victorian history. She has been a university lecturer since 1989 and has combined this career with being a biographer and literary journalist. Her first book, The Victorian Governess (1994) was based on her PhD. George Eliot: the Last Victorian (1999) won the James Tait Black award. In 2005 she published The Short Life and Long Times of Mrs Beeton, listed for the Samuel Johnson Prize and the Andre Simon Prize.

Places and Nature

David North is the education manager at Norfolk Wildlife Trust and has a lifelong interest in wildlife and conservation. Following his geography degree at Durham University he taught English for two years in Sudan. Returning from Africa he completed a MSc in ecology and then worked in wildlife conservation in Wales. He moved to Norfolk in 1988 to take up the post of conservation and education director at Pensthorpe Waterfowl Trust. He is the author of Wilderness Walks (Larks Press 1993) and The Natural and Unnatural History of Norfolk's Birds (Blue Sky Publications 1993).

Guidebooks and Travel

Keith Skipper may joke that he only left Norfolk once, by mistake – but whether or not that's true, the author and broadcaster has an intimate knowledge of every corner of the county. He has written numerous books, recent ones including The Bumper Book of Norfolk Squit and Confessions of a Norfolk Newshound. He is a champion of the Norfolk dialect and was a founder of Friends of Norfolk Dialect, and was awarded the MBE in the New Year's Honours List for services to the Norfolk community in 2007.

He has also been a keen supporter of the East Anglian Book Awards, hosting the ceremony in previous years and latterly serving as a judge.

Art and Photography

Amanda Geitner is head of collections and exhibitions at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts at the UEA.

Working with a team of curators, conservators and technicians she is responsible for the development, care and display of the Robert and Lisa Sainsbury Collection, the University of East Anglia Collection of Abstract and Constructivist Art and Design and the Anderson Collection of Art Nouveau.

She and her team also curate and organise up to eight temporary exhibitions annually, such as the present show Basketry: Making Human Nature.

Fiction

This category was to be judged by the late Stephen Foster, the acclaimed Norwich-based author of fiction and non-fiction books such as Walking Ollie, and Me and Dylan. A replacement judge is to be confirmed.

East Anglian Book of the Year

The overall winner will be chosen from the seven category winners by a panel of three judges: Caroline Jarrold, community affairs adviser at Jarrold; Katy Carr, marketing manager at Writers' Centre Norwich; and Keiron Pim, books editor at the EDP.