Baillie Gifford Partner Event. What Makes a Great Author?

Join Baillie Gifford Prize judges science journalist Anjana Ahuja and BBC World Service presenter Razia Iqbal, who discuss judging non-fiction for one of the UK’s most prestigious literary awards, the qualities that make a non-fiction book great and the merits of their chosen winner (David France’s ‘How to Survive a Plague’). They will be joined in conversation with Prize Director Toby Mundy on the difficulties, challenges and joys of the judging process for this award.

Anjana Ahuja is a freelance science journalist and a Contributing Writer at the Financial Times, where she is best known for her regular opinion columns. She has also contributed to Newsnight and made documentaries for BBC Radio 4. Prior to that, she was a staff writer at The Times for 16 years.In 2010, Anjana co-authored Selected, a book on the evolution of human leadership. She is a current trustee of the charity Sense about Science and a former school governor. She has a PhD in space physics from Imperial College London.

Razia Iqbal is one of the main presenters of Newshour, the flagship news and current affairs programme on BBC World Service.  She also regularly presents The World Tonight on BBC Radio 4. She was the BBC’s arts correspondent for a decade, covering arts and culture for radio and television news. She also presented Talking Books on BBC World TV: an in depth interview programme with leading writers. Razia has been a journalist with the BBC for nearly three decades, and has worked as a political reporter, and as a foreign correspondent in Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Most recently, she has covered the 2016 Presidential campaign in the US; the Turkish elections and travelled in India and Pakistan making programmes for radio and television. She was born in Uganda, Kampala and moved to London as a child.

Toby Mundy is Executive Director of the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction. In 2000 he founded Atlantic Books, where he was Chief Executive and Publisher until 2014, when he left to start literary agency TMA Limited. He is also chair of trustees of Wimbledon BookFest, a registered charity; a partner at the management and communications consultancy Jericho Chambers and chair of the advisory board of The Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award.