Meet the judges:
IBC Awards 2025

Jen Campbell is an award-winning poet and bestselling author of 14 books for adults and children. Her most recent titles include Please Do Not Touch This Exhibit, which was a Poetry Book Society recommendation; The Sister Who Ate Her Brothers; and the Franklin and Luna series, which won a Made for Mums Gold Award. She also works as a freelance editor, book reviewer and disability advocate. Find out more at www.jen-campbell.co.uk.

Joseph Coelho is a best-selling, multi-award-winning children’s playwright and author of over 45 books. His book The Boy Lost in the Maze was the winner of the 2024 Carnegie Medal for Writing and has received international acclaim, appearing on The White Ravens booklist, Munich; The IBBY Honour List 2024, and was awarded The Extraordinary Book of 2023 by The International Children’s Literature Festival of Berlin. Joseph was the Waterstone’s Children’s Laureate 2022 to 2024.

Liz Pemberton is the Director of The Black Nursery Manager Ltd, a training and consultancy company which focuses on anti-racist practice within Early Years. With 20 years in the education sector, Liz’s roles have included Secondary School Teacher (QTS), Public Speaker and up until 2020, Nursery Manager. 

Liz’s mission is to promote inclusive practice in the Early Years sector, with a particular focus on how race, culture and ethnicity should be considered in this practice. Liz’s accolades include being recognised in 2024 by Serendipity Institute for Black Arts and Heritage as 1 of 100 Black Women Who Have Made a Mark, and nominated as a finalist for Trainer of the Year for the 2022 Nursery World Awards.

Cathy Reay is a writer based in the Home Counties. Starting her career writing for the now-defunct Disability Now magazine for the charity Scope, she moved on to freelance gigging for music magazines, took a pause from the freelance grind, and then later started writing for broadsheets and independent publications. Her work broadly covers disability politics and culture. In 2023 she contributed chapters to three different books, and she is now currently writing her own, How to Be Disabled and Proud (or at Least Kinda Sorta Okay With It!), due for publication in summer 2025.

David Roberts has had many jobs including shelf stacker, milliner and film extra before finally realising his dream of becoming a children’s book illustrator when his first book Frankie Stein’s Robot, written by Roy Apps, was published in 1998. This book was shortlisted for the Mother Goose Award for emerging illustrators.

David has won many awards, including the Society of Authors’ Queen’s Knickers Prize 2022, and has been shortlisted for the Kate Greenaway Medal for Illustration on four occasions. The 2021 book Bathe the Cat written by Alice B McGinty has won multiple awards across America including the Irma S and James H Black gold medal in 2023. 

Sonia Thompson is the Headteacher at St Matthew’s C.E. Primary School in Birmingham. She was part of the original United Kingdom Literacy Association (UKLA) Building Communities of Readers research and is passionate about evidence-based reading for pleasure practices. Her school was the first winner of the Egmont/UKLA Reading for Pleasure Award. Sonia has spoken at various conferences and schools about reading for pleasure practices. She is a co-opted member of the UKLA National Council, as a Teachers’ Reading Research Group Representative.