2025 Juries
Six independent jurors – three to pick the winner of the German prize and three to judge the English one – are selected each year by the prize administrators, Kirchner Kommunikation in Germany and the Society of Authors in the UK.
The Ilse Schwepcke Prize founders Barbara Schwepcke and Karl-Burkhard Haus.
Helena Attlee
English Jury
Helena Attlee’s latest book, Lev’s Violin, was published in 2021 and broadcast as BBC Radio 4’s ‘Book of the Week.’ Before that came The Land Where Lemons Grow, which was a Sunday Times Bestseller and has been translated into several languages. It was shortlisted for the Stanford Dolman travel writing prize, won the Guild of Food Writers’ Book of the Year 2015, and was also broadcast on Radio 4. Helena is currently working on a book set in Sicily. She is a consultant fellow of the Royal Literary Fund and teaches writing in many different contexts.
Arabella von Friesen
English Jury
Arabella Friesen studied archaeology at SOAS and has worked as a translator, writer, researcher, editor, reviewer, artist, gardener and cook. She has worked at John Sandoe Books in London since 2012.
Stephanie Yeboah
English Jury
Stephanie Yeboah is a freelance writer, author, content creator and body image advocate based in London. Stephanie is the author of Fattily Ever After: A Black Fat Girl’s Guide to Living Life Unapologetically, a critically acclaimed book that explores the intersections of race, body image, and mental health. She is also author of the upcoming romantic comedy novel, Chaotic Energy, out in February 2025. Her work has been featured in numerous publications, including British Vogue, Elle Magazine, Stylist, Grazia, Refinery29 and more.
Antje Rávik Strubel
German Jury
Antje Rávik Strubel lives in Potsdam as a writer and translator. She has received numerous awards for her novels, most recently the German Book Prize in 2021 for "Blaue Frau" ("Blue Woman"). She translates, among others, Joan Didion, Virginia Woolf, and Monika Fagerholm.
Maria Klöcker
German Jury
Dr. Maria Lucia Klöcker studied law in Freiburg and Geneva. In 2013, she founded the bookstore Weltenleser in Frankfurt, which has been awarded the German Bookstore Prize multiple times.
Martina Wimmer
German Jury
Martina Wimmer, born in 1965, resides in Berlin. She previously traveled the world as a music journalist for ME/Sounds and Rolling Stone, later satisfying her wanderlust as a travel reporter for Geo Saison, Brigitte, and FAS. Since 2008, she has been the cultural editor of the magazine mare, for which she also regularly works as an author, most recently in San Francisco and on the Scottish island of Eigg. Additionally, she has published three books with Ullstein Verlag, all of which are no longer in print, and has a few more in the drawer that have so far been waiting in vain for their completion.
The Ilse Schwepcke
Prize Founders
Karl-Burkhard Haus is Ilse’s “little” brother (his words) and is the founder of Schriftform in Frankfurt.
Barbara Schwepcke is Ilse’s daughter, and with her published travel literature in the collection The Armchair Traveller.
As prize co-founders, Karl-Burkhard and Barbara have no role in judging the prizes. They have been involved in choosing the jurors.
“These prizes in my mother’s name will celebrate the adventurousness, perception and literary skill of women at a time when women’s rights are under attack in many places around the world. It’s never been more important to read women’s experiences as travellers and to affirm women’s right to travel near and far.”
Barbara Schwepcke, prize co-founder