Boyd Tonkin is a writer, journalist and critic who chaired the judging panel of the Man Booker International Prize in 2016, and is Special Adviser to the prize and a trustee of the Orwell Foundation. He writes on books and arts for international media including The Economist, The Financial Times, The Spectator, New Scientist and theartsdesk.com, and contributes to BBC Radio. At The Independent newspaper, where he was Literary Editor and then Senior Writer between 1996 and 2016, he re-founded the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in 2001, and co-judged it until its merger in 2015 with the Man Booker International Prize.