A polyglot jury of experienced writers representing eleven of the major linguistic regions of the world seeks the best international texts in the genre and decides on a shortlist of seven, eventually choosing three winners from among them. The members of the jury are appointed by the organizer. In addition, an advisory committee of distinguished writers lends its moral and intellectual backing to the Lettre Ulysses Award. Members of the committee have included Günter Grass, the German writer and winner of the 1999 Nobel Prize in Literature, the Polish reportage author Ryszard Kapuściński, the French ethnologist Jean Malaurie, and the Belarusian writer Svetlana Aleksievich.