Susan Harada, Siobhan Roberts and Arno Kopecky will judge the 2017 Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction, one of the country's biggest nonfiction prizes.

The annual $60,000 award celebrates the best in Canadian literary nonfiction. The 2016 winner was reporter Deborah Campbell for A Disappearance in Damascus.

All three judges this year come from journalism backgrounds.

Harada is the head of Carleton University's journalism program and has worked at CBC, contributed to The Walrus and J-Source.ca.

Kopecky is an author and environmental journalist from Vancouver. His sophomore book The Oil Man and the Sea won the 2014 Edna Staebler Award for Creative Nonfiction and was shortlisted for the Governor General's Literary Award.

Roberts is a science writer based in Toronto who contributes to The New Yorker's "Elements" blog. Her books include King of Infinite Space, which won the 2009 Euler Book Prize, and Genius at Play.

Finalists of the 2017 prize will be announced on Sept. 20, 2017. The winner will be announced on Nov. 14, 2017.