08 April 2020

Azadeh Moaveni, Kate Clanchy, Hussein Kesvani and James Meek are among the longlisted authors for this year's Orwell Prize for Political Writing and Political Fiction. While Meek's To Calais, in Ordinary Time is longlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction, Clanchy's Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me, Moaveni's Guest House for Young Widows and Kesvani's Follow Me, Akhi are all up for the Political Writing Prize.

This is the second year that the prizes for fiction and non-fiction have been separated, previously umbrelled under The Orwell Book Prize. The shortlists for both prizes will be announced in mid-May. The prizes are worth £3,000 each and the winners will be announced on George Orwell's birthday, the 25th June.

07 April 2020

Isabella Hammad's The Parisian, which is published by Jonathan Cape, is among the ten debuts longlisted for the 2020 Desmond Elliott Prize. The historical fiction book is about a young Palestinian dreamer, Midhat Kamal. It encompasses his childhood in Nablus, Palestine, student days in Montpellier, the turbulent years of the first world war and the Palestinian struggle for independence.

The Desmond Elliott Prize is now the flagship award in the National Centre for Writing’s portfolio of Early Career Awards, launched in 2019 to support new writers. This year it is judged by Preti Taneja, Sonia Sodha and Sinéad Gleeson. A shortlist will be announced on 6th May and the winner will be revealed on 2nd July.

07 April 2020

Clare Rees' Jelly, published by Chicken House Books, has won the Kitschies Golden Tentacle Award for best debut novel. Inspired by a fourteen-century Viking romance, Jelly is about a group of people trapped just off the coast and their attempts to reach land. As environmental disaster has caused the sea levels to rise along with ancient monsters, it also appropriately features a giant jellyfish (kraken) as the main villain.

The Golden Tentacle is awarded annually to a debut novel that best fits the criteria of progressive, intelligent and entertaining. It is sponsored by Blackwell's and the winner receives a £500 prize as well as a hand-crafted trophy.

07 April 2020

Alex Michaelides' The Silent Patient, a million copy bestselling thriller with an unguessable twist, is among the twelve books up for the 2020 Glass Bell Award. This longlist adds to Michaelides' recent accolades, which includes the British Book Awards: Crime & Thriller Book of the Year shortlist. 

Launched in 2017, the Glass Bell Award celebrates the best storytelling in every genre. It is judged by a group of ten people from Goldsboro Books, DHH Literary Agency and The Dome Press. The shortlist of six will be announced on 11th May, with the winner, who will receive both £2,000, and a handmade, engraved glass bell, will be announced on 2nd July.

31 March 2020

Inua Ellams is among the six authors shortlised for the 2020 Brunel International African Poetry Prize with his forthcoming poetry collection, The Actual, due to be published by Penned in the Margins this October. The Nigerian-born writer said in The Bookseller: "The collection came out accidentally, the poems poured out quickly and fiercely, between writing screen and stage plays, all written on my phone, in transit, between meetings, before I'd fall asleep and as soon as I'd wake up. The topics and range of the poems are vast and reflect much of our fast-paced and increasingly polarised world. I am as excited to share them as I am nervous of their reception."

The award is aimed at the development, celebration and promotion of poetry from Africa, and it is currently the largest cash prize for African poetry. It was founded by Booker Prize-winner Bernardine Evaristo in 2012 at a time when African poetry was almost invisible on the international literary landscape. 

31 March 2020

Jean-Baptiste Del Amo's Animalia (Fitzcarraldo Editions), translated from French by Frank Wynne, is the winner of the 2020 Republic of Consciousness Prize. The book follows a peasant family in the 20th century as their plot of land is developed into an intensive pig farm, and it is about war, violence, sickness and cruelty. 

Due to the outbreak of Covid-19, the Republic of Consciousness has decided to share its prize pot of £10,000 equally between all five shortlisted publishers “in what is an extremely difficult time for small businesses and freelancers,” with the87press, And Other Stories, Galley Beggar Press and Dostoevsky Wannabe all to receive £2,000 alongside Fitzcarraldo.

31 March 2020

Among those shortlisted for this year's Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction are Isabella Hammad's The Parisian, a sweeping love story that spans Palestine, France and Egypt in the first half of the 20th century, and James Meek's To Calais, in Ordinary Time, a novel set in the fourteenth century about home, belonging, love and courage.

Meek and Hammad are among the six shortlisted authors who will receive £1,500 each before the overall winner is awarded £25,000 funded by the Duke and Duchess of Buccleuch. Owing to the Covid-19 outbreak, the festival has been postponed and the mode of announcement of 2020's winner is currently being reviewed.  

31 March 2020

Ed Clarke's The Secret Dragon, published by Puffin, is shortlisted for the Tir na n-Og Children’s Book Awards 2020. The book, which is appropriately set in Wales, appears in the category of English language books for children of any age with an authentic Welsh background. It follows a scientifically minded character named Mari who is fossil-hunting on the beach when she discovers a tiny, curled-up creature; soon she’s facing the challenges of rearing a mischievous baby dragon while trying to study it and keep it out of trouble.

The winner will be selected in May and the awards are organised by the Books Council of Wales and sponsored by CLIP Cymru Wales, celebrating the work of authors and illustrators published in 2019. 

27 March 2020

Claire Adam is shortlisted for the 2020 Authors' Club Best First Novel Award with her debut Golden Child (Faber & Faber), which is a deeply affecting novel set in Trinidad, following a family as they navigate impossible choices about scarcity, loyalty, and love. The judges called the novel, which has already been named as one of the BBC's most influential novels, "tense, moving and richly atmospheric."

The book is also currently longlisted for the 2020 Jhalak Prize, and the shortlist for this award will be announced on April 14th. The winner of the Best First Novel Award will be revealed on 22nd May and the winning author will receive a £2,500 prize.  

26 March 2020

Holly Jackson and Lauren James have made their debut on the YA Book Prize shortlist this year with A Good Girl's Guide to Murder (Electric Monkey) and The Quiet at the End of the World (Walker Books). Jackson's book is a story of a teenage sleuth who investigates a five-year-old murder case in her small town as part of a school project, while James' is about the last two young people left in the world after a devastating virus caused global infertility. 

The judging panel will be joined again by teenage judges from schools across the country and Julia Eccleshare, children’s director of The Hay Festival, which is partnering with The Bookseller on the prize.

24 March 2020

Valeria Luiselli is this year's winner of the £30,000 Rathbones Folio prize for her third novel, Lost Children Archive, published in the UK by 4th Estate. She accepted the prize from her home in New York in the first ever digital-only Rathbones Folio Prize ceremony, which was initially supposed to take place at the British Library in London. The writer said in her speech, "Giving a literary prize- right now- means that we believe in what we're doing. It means that we believe in books as the vehicles of something much greater than us, something that will outlive us."

This is the first time the annual prize – which rewards the best work of literature of the year, regardless of form – has been awarded to a woman since its inception in 2013. Congratulations to Valeria Luiselli on receiving the award and to Zadie Smith, Sinéad Gleeson, Azadeh Moaveni and Fiona Benson on their nominations.  

20 March 2020

The 2020 British Book Awards have drawn up this year's shortlists for the Best Books of the Year prizes, and among them are Alex Michaelides, Holly Jackson, Katherine Rundell and Alice Oseman. The eight Book of the Year winners will be decided by separate panels: Michaelides' The Silent Patient is up for the Crime & Thriller Book of the Year; Oseman's graphic novel Heartstopper Vol 1. is nominated for the Children’s Illustrated & Non-fiction Book of the Year; and Jackson's A Good Girl's Guide to Murder and Rundell's The Good Thieves are both in the run for the Children's Fiction Book of the Year.  

The Nibbies, the annual showcase of the best of the British book industry, will see established authors compete with breakthrough talent for the hotly-contested awards at this year’s ceremony on 29th June.

20 March 2020

Sam Copeland is shortlisted for Literary Agent of the Year at the British Book Awards 2020. He joined Rogers, Coleridge and White in 2006 and was made a director in 2016. He has an extremely diverse list of award-winning and bestselling authors, including Alex Michaelides and Holly Jackson who are respectively up for the Crime & Thriller Book of the Year and Children's Fiction Book of the Year at the British Book Awards. 

Sam is also a Children's author and currently welcomes submissions.

19 March 2020

Zadie Smith's turn-of-the-century debut novel White Teeth has made it to the British Book Awards "30 from 30" shortlist, putting it up for a trophy that will crown one book the most influential of the past three decades. A one-off prize, the award celebrates 30 years of publishing excellence since the British Book Awards, or Nibbies, were launched in 1990. 

The shortlist, handpicked by reader and trade votes, is made up of past winners and one wildcard. The winner will be announced later this year. 

19 March 2020

The American Academy of Arts and Letters has announced the names of nineteen writers who will receive its 2020 awards in literature, and among them are Valeria Luiselli and Isabella Hammad. The awards will be presented in New York at the Academy’s annual Ceremonial in May, honoring both emerging and established writers. 

Valeria Luiselli is the recipient of this year's Rosenthal Family Foundation Award for her novel Lost Children Archive, while Isabella Hammad's The Parisian has picked up the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction. 

12 March 2020

The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction has longlisted both Isabella Hammad's The Parisian, a sweeping love story that spans Palestine, France and Egypt in the first half of the 20th century, and James Meek's To Calais, in Ordinary Time, a novel set in the fourteenth century about home, belonging, love and courage, for this year's £25,000 prize. 

A shortlist will be announced at the beginning of April and each shortlisted author will receive £1,500, an increase from £1,000 in previous years, making it one of the richest literary prizes in the UK. The winner will be announced at the Baillie Gifford Borders Book Festival in Scotland on 12th June.

06 March 2020

Directed by Coky Giedroyc, from a script written by Caitlin Moran herself, the film adaptation of How To Build A Girl is set to be released in UK cinemas later this year on 3 July 2020. It first premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) in September 2019 to critical acclaim, and starring are Beanie Feldstein (Booksmart), Alfie Allen (Game of Thrones), Chris O'Dowd (State of the Union), Emma Thompson (Late Night) and Paddy Considine (Peaky Blinders).  

Based on the novel by Caitlin Moran, itself loosely inspired by her own experiences as a young music writer, the film follows Feldstein as Johanna Morrigan – a working class 16-year-old living in Wolverhampton who moves to London and reinvents herself as rock critic Dolly Wilde.

Click here to watch a Q&A with the film's cast and crew at the TIFF.