Meet the Final Panel Judges: Inside The Queen's Commonwealth Writing Competition 2026 Final Panel
Today, The Queen's Commonwealth Writing Competition 2026 held its Final Panel Judging, bringing together an extraordinary assembly of literary luminaries, cultural leaders and creative voices from across the Commonwealth to select this year's winning stories.
Leading the panel was our Final Panel Chair, Sir Ben Okri OBE, whose lifelong devotion to the craft of storytelling embodies everything The Queen’s Commonwealth Writing Competition stands for. He was joined by a distinguished group of writers, scholars, educators and cultural figures, whose combined expertise ensured the judging process met the very highest standards of excellence.
This year marks a landmark moment for the Royal Commonwealth Society. The competition received a record-breaking number of entries, and for the first time, it was restructured to recognise winners from each of the five regions of the Commonwealth, with the overall winner selected from among them. It is a change that puts the breadth of the Commonwealth's talent front and centre, celebrate young voices from every corner of the Commonwealth.
PANEL CHAIR
Sir Ben Okri OBE
Sir Ben Okri OBE is a poet, novelist, essayist, short story writer, anthologist, aphorist, and playwright. He has also written film scripts.
His works have won numerous national and international prizes, including the Booker Prize for Fiction. Sir Ben has received numerous honorary doctorates for his contribution to literature.
Recently, his Grenfell poem on Channel Four YouTube received more than six million views on Facebook.
His poem is engraved in the Memorial Gates: “Our future is greater than our past.”
Sir Ben also recited a specially commissioned poem for the 2024 Commonwealth Day Service, focusing on resilience and the Commonwealth.
FINAL PANEL JUDGES
Chetna Makan
Chetna Makan was born in Jabalpur in Central India. She has a degree in fashion and worked as a fashion designer in Mumbai before moving to the UK in 2004.
Chetna participated in The Great British Bake Off in 2014 and has since written eight cookbooks. They cover baking, Indian street food, healthy Indian cuisine, vegetarian dishes, and quick Indian meals. She also has a very popular YouTube channel, Food with Chetna, where she shares her creative flair for all things cooking and baking.
Annie Garthwaite
Annie Garthwaite grew up in a working-class community in the northeast of England. She studied English at the University of Wales before embarking on a 30-year international business career working with multi-national companies and eventually establishing her own communications consultancy. In 2017, she studied for an MA in Creative Writing at the University of Warwick, during which time she wrote her debut novel, Cecily, which was published by Penguin in 2021.
Cecily was named a ‘top pick’ by The Times and Sunday Times, a ‘Best Book of 2021’ by independent bookshops and Waterstones, and, in 2023, was optioned for television by Just John Films.
Annie’s second novel, The King’s Mother, was published in July 2024 and was immediately named ‘Book of the Month’ by The Times.
Caroline Haines CC
Caroline Haines is a lifelong educator who was elected to the Court of Common Council of the City of London in 2017. She has served as Chair of the City’s Education Board, Chair of Governors of their Ofsted Outstanding Sixth Form College and an Academy Trustee.
Having completed a three-year term as Vice Chair of Policy & Chair of the Natural Environment Board, she is presently Deputy Chair (Acting Chair by November 2026) of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, is Chair of EEDI and Epping Forest & Commons, recently also chairing the impactful Women Pivoting to Digital Taskforce 2024-6. As Lead Member for Skills she is involved in the development of guardrails and training demanded by the advent of AI. Caroline was Master Educator 2022-3.
Imtiaz Dharker
Born in Pakistan and brought up in Scotland, Imtiaz Dharker is a poet, artist and documentary film-maker who divides her time between London and India.
This mixed heritage and itinerant lifestyle are at the heart of her writing: questioning, imagistic, and richly textured poems that span geographical and cultural displacement, conflict, and gender politics, while also interrogating received ideas about home, freedom, and faith.
Imtiaz was awarded The Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 2014 and is known for poems such as The Trick.
Portia Subran
Portia Subran is a writer and ink artist from Chaguanas, Trinidad and Tobago. Her stories are inspired by her parents’ tales of colonial and early post-colonial Trinidad, her experience, and Ole Talk gathered over the years.
She is the winner of the 2019 Cecile de Jongh Literary Prize from the Caribbean Writer, and the 2016 Small Axe Literary Short Story Competition.
She was a finalist for the 2022 Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival Short Fiction Story Contest and a regional winner of the 2024 Commonwealth Short Story Prize for the Caribbean.
Rev Dr Paul Edmondson
Rev Dr Paul Edmondson is Head of Research for the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, an Honorary Fellow of The Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham, a Visiting Professor in Human Rights, Birmingham City University, and an Honorary Senior Research Fellow of Blackfriars Hall, University of Oxford.
His several publications on Shakespeare include Shakespeare: Ideas in Profile and, with Stanley Wells, All the Sonnets of Shakespeare.
He is currently writing Shakespeare and Stratford-upon-Avon for the Oxford Shakespeare Topics series.
He is a Trustee of the British Shakespeare Association, on the Council of The Rose Theatre Trust, and The Friends of Shakespeare’s Church. He is a priest in the Church of England, and has lived and worked in Stratford-upon-Avon since 1995.
Thank you to every writer who entered, and to our panel of judges for the time, care and expertise they brought to the process.
Results will be announced later this year.
