Author
Tacye
Katya Balen won both the Yoto Carnegie Award and the Shadowers’ Choice Award this year with her beautifully written work, October, October.
To celebrate this year's amazing shortlist titles, we are giving you a chance to win the entire…
Kat Dunn talks writing the details of daily life in Glorious Poison, the conclusion to her epic…
"he details of daily life are what I love about historical fiction – it’s as close to time travel as we can get."
Molly Morris talks teenagers coping with grief in her unforgettable novel, This Is Not the End
"eenagers experience profound loss and love and stress and anguish in the same way adults do and a lot of the time alongside adults."
Kathryn Foxfield on making characters tick in her thriller, Tag, You’re Dead
When teen reality star Anton Frazer unveils his latest stunt - a live-streamed, citywide game of Tag in which the prize is to be one of his live-in acolytes - his fans go wild. The whole world is watching. The contestants are kitted out…
Sue Divin talks the courage to build peace in Guard Your Heart
"Novels teach us through empathy – through our heart. I’m hoping that readers will connect with issues around identity and human rights as well as building peace and respect – those concepts can apply much wider than just Northern Ireland."
Phil Earle talks writing for underdogs in When the Sky Falls
"What I’m interested in people’s ability to do good, regardless of the difficult starts to their lives."
Katya Balen chats playing with language in October, October
"I also find not thinking about what I’m writing often helps new expressions to flow."
Julian Sedgwick talks honouring Japanese culture and philosophy in Tsunami Girl
"Amidst the trauma and sadness there was humour, and a determination to build new, possibly even better, communities."
Finbar Hawkins chats his writing journey before penning his debut, Witch
"Novel writing is about you sitting a desk until that draft is done, so it’s a solitary, immersed process. And then you rewrite it. And again..."
Alex Wheatle talks writing Jamaican dialect and teenager’s perspective in Cane Warriors
"One of the things a conquered people lose first is their language, so keeping a hint of that language in the narrative is very important to me."
WIN a set of Heartstopper books by Alice Oseman
Win a set of Heartstopper books, the graphic novel behind the beloved Netflix adaptation.
Naomi Gibson talks AI programming in her debut YA novel, Every Line of You
Every Line of You is a thriller about a girl who uses AI to cope with her grief, except the project becomes bigger than she ever anticipated...
Finn Longman talks compassion, hope and dealing with pain in their debut YA novel, The Butterfly…
"Compassion, because Isabel is human and deserves second chances and deserves safety, and hope, because there is too much despair in the world already."
Bonnie-Sue Hitchcock chats small towns and linking short stories in Everyone Dies Famous in a Small…
"Short stories, like radio, need to be succinct and every word must be essential."
Ibi Zoboi and Yusef Salaam talk hope and poetry in their novel in verse, Punching the Air
"Hope is knowing that there is always another day, another minute, another second to make things right."