WRANGLESTONE Longlisted for the Branford Boase Award (press hyperlink)

The longlist for the 2021 Branford Boase Award is announced today (Thursday 28 January 2021). Set up in memory of award-winning author Henrietta Branford and her editor Wendy Boase, one of the founders of Walker Books, the Branford Boase Award is given annually to the author of an outstanding debut novel for children. It has a notable record in picking out the most talented authors at the start of their career. Past winners and shortlisted authors have included Siobhan Dowd, Meg Rosoff, Mal Peet, Frank Cottrell Boyce and Patrick Ness as well as Frances Hardinge, M G Leonard and Philip Reeve.

WRANGLESTONE Shortlisted for the YA BOOK PRIZE. (Press Hyperlink)

The YA Book Prize launched in 2014 to award a YA title written by an author living in the UK or Ireland.
It is the first prize in the UK and Ireland to specifically focus on fiction for young adults and addresses an important need for a prize in the growing YA and teen market. The prize celebrates great books for teenagers and young adults and aims to get more teens reading and buying books.
Previous winners of the prize are Louise O’Neill’s Only Ever Yours (2015), Sarah Crossan’s One (2016), Patrice Lawrence’s Orangeboy (2017), Will Hill’s After the Fire (2018), Sara Barnard’s Goodbye, Perfect (2019) and Juno Dawson’s Meat Market (2020).
The prize is organised by book trade magazine The Bookseller and it is run in partnership with Hay Festival. The shortlist is selected by a team at The Bookseller and the winner is selected by a panel of expert and teenage judges, who are asked to pick the book they believe is the best-written and that they would be most likely to share with young adults.

COSTA BOOK AWARDS NOMINATION

This nomination is quite simply beyond any dreams I had for Wranglestone. Everyone, bar Little Tiger Group, passed on it. I think there’s still a long way to go before LGBTQ+ children’s authors and their characters are allowed to play outside of their own issue based narratives. I hope this nomination encourages publishers to find greater courage when acquiring books for children. All young people need all kinds of stories and to see themselves having all kinds of adventures, and to exist in all kinds of genres. To be the hero. To be the one who finds love. For now though, I simply want to thank Little Tiger for their gumption and the Costa judges for rescuing my debut from 2020 so it and my career have a shot at finding more readers. I feel let in and I am so very, very grateful for that. x