Amsterdam Book Prize
judge & Reading Team
Readers joined our editorial team in 2021-2022 to review and consider submissions for the 2022 Amsterdam Open Book Prize. In May, a shortlist of 12 works was sent to judge Raina León. The winner and runner-up will be announced in July.
Reading team
Based in Amsterdam, originally from England. Steven Baguley has spent the last few years working words in UX and design, and teaming up with absolute superstar writers to help their stories come to life.
Alex Gabriela (she/her & they/them) is a queer Afro-Caribbean femme, zinester and community organizer based in Amsterdam. She is co-founder of the collective 6 ISLANDS and of the reading group BPOC Bookclub. Finally, Alex is a junior researcher and grassroots archivist at The Black Archives in Amsterdam focussing on Black history in the Dutch context.
Malaysian-born and of Sri Lankan Tamil ancestry, Ashanya Indralingam spent a decade in the US before moving to Amsterdam. Her writing largely centers around themes of identity and belonging for immigrants navigating Western spaces. She’s a Pushcart Prize 2021 nominee, with writing published in Boomer Lit, Litro Mag, Bold Magazine, and AAWW’s The Margins.
Afra Foli is an urban geographer based in Accra and Amsterdam. She learned how to live through reading, and writes short stories in gratitude. She teaches, loves to ask questions and is an earnest fan of plot.
Baha Görkem Yalim is a visual artist. After working as an engineer, Yalim completed their Bachelor Fine Arts at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam, Honours in Art and Research at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie and the University of Amsterdam, and Masters in Art Praxis at the Dutch Art Institute (DAI). Yalim's practice is multidisciplinary and defined by being purposefully in flux, refusing to crystallise in any one form or medium. Yalım employs video, sculpture, and performance sometimes in variations and always as folds of the one and same practice. In all its variations, things come together toward durational proposals and are radically allowed to appear as themselves. Their position at times also crosses to writer, educator, and curator, and includes the production of texts across poetry, fiction, and academic reflection.
Radha Smith is a Taiwanese-Canadian writer based in London. Her work has appeared in Mslexia and Ricepaper Magazine, and she holds an MA in creative writing from the University of East Anglia. She is interested in thoughtful, daring writing regardless of genre.
Danick Trouwloon (she/her) is a native of Curaçao, a lover of all things literary, and a passionate advocate for equality and climate justice. After discovering at a young age that reading does not need to be a solitary activity, she has actively sought out literary communities – both in academic and leisure spaces. In August 2020, Danick co-founded BPOC Bookclub and she has been involved in organizing literary events focused on the ABC SSS islands since.
Contest judge
Raina J. León, PhD is Black, Afro-Boricua and from Philadelphia. Her first collection of poetry, Canticle of Idols, was a finalist for both the Cave Canem First Book Poetry Prize (2005) and the Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize (2006). Her second book, Boogeyman Dawn (2013, Salmon Poetry), was a finalist for the Naomi Long Madgett Prize (2010). Salmon Poetry also published sombra : (dis)locate. Her first chapbook, profeta without refuge, was a finalist for the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses Firecracker award. Her second chapbook, Areyto to Atabey: Essays on the Mother(ing) Self, was published by Alley Cat Books (2019). Her fourth collection, *black god mother this body*, will come out from Black Freighter Press in 2022. She’s currently at work on a multigenre exploration of blackness in color, academia, art as resistance, and the preservation of a whole and humanized spirit. She also is a founding editor of The Acentos Review, an online quarterly, international journal devoted to the promotion and publication of Latinx arts. With Dr. Norma Thomas, she co-founded StoryJoy, Inc. dedicated to creating flourishing spaces for BIPOC creatives and human service providers to boldly and radically imagine and build the worlds of our rest, wholeness, revolutionary joy, and thriving. She educates our present and future agitators/educators as a full professor of education.