The Booker Prize Podcast
Sign up for our fortnightly podcast, which features lively discussions and fascinating insights from the world of the Booker Prizes
The Booker Prize Podcast casts a fresh eye over winning books and other nominated titles from years past, features interviews with authors, experts and enthusiasts, and peers behind the curtain of the latest prizes. Follow us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favourite podcasts.
Featuring deep dives into classic Booker novels and hidden gems, as well as interviews with authors and judges, the podcast will be hosted by novelist and critic Jo Hamya and critic and broadcaster James Walton. Together, they will dust off shortlists from years gone by, revisit past ceremonies and even explore some of the prize’s most controversial moments.
Episodes will feature plenty of opportunities for listeners to get involved, including a recurring segment, ‘The Booker Clinic’, where Jo and James will prescribe a book as a remedy to listeners’ personal dilemmas. We’d love you to contribute in other ways, too, including suggesting books to be discussed and submitting comments to help shape future episodes.
New episodes will be released every second Thursday. You can follow the show wherever you get your podcasts, so you don’t miss an episode. You heard it here first.
Jo Hamya says:
‘In these early stages, it’s been great fun to disagree with roughly half of everything James says and an even greater joy to discover our common ground, or else bring each other round to a new point of view. The Booker Prizes have given us wonderful scope to approach their history and library: my hope is that our podcast is a nuanced, candid, easy place to spend time in. I can’t wait for listeners to think and gossip with us.’
James Walton says:
‘There’s no denying that Jo and I were thrown together by the Booker Prizes in a strange kind of blind date. But even after the first recording it felt surprisingly clear that they must have known what they were doing, because working together is proving a joy: informative, stimulating and, most of all, fun. I much look forward to being joined by our listeners who will no doubt keep us on our toes. Here’s hoping they’ll enjoy the podcast – and side with me in any disputes (good-natured ones, obviously).’
Jo Hamya and James Walton
© Hugo GlendinningWhere to listen to our podcast
Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google Podcasts | Overcast | Podcast Addict | Pocketcasts | Castbox | Stitcher | iHeartRadio | PlayerFM | Podcast Republic | Castro | RadioPublic | RSS
Jo Hamya and James Walton
© Hugo GlendinningAbout our hosts
Jo Hamya is the author of Three Rooms (Jonathan Cape, 2021) and The Hypocrite (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2024). Her writing has been praised by the Times, the New York Times, the Guardian and the TLS, among others. She is currently completing a doctorate on the impact of social media on 21st century notions of literary value. In her spare time, she works as a freelance book reviewer.
James Walton has written and hosted 17 series of the Radio 4 literary quiz show The Write Stuff and has appeared on Pick of the Week, Woman’s Hour, A Good Read and Saturday Review. His book reviews have appeared in the New York Review of Books, the Spectator, the Times and several other publications. He writes a weekly quiz in the FT Magazine, is a television critic for the Spectator and is the author of the anthology The Faber Book of Smoking (2000) and the Penguin Book Quiz (2019).
The podcast is produced by Daddy’s SuperYacht Productions, a British Podcast Award winning production company specialising in digital content.
Jo Hamya and James Walton
© Hugo Glendinning
