SHADOW JUDGE ANNOUNCEMENT! The Sunday Times/University of Warwick Young Writer of the Year Award @YoungWriterYear

It's a real thrill and such an honour to announce that I've asked to be a Shadow Judge for the 2019 The Sunday Times / University of Warwick  Young Writer of the Year Award

Along with four other amazing bloggers I will be reading the shortlisted books, at the same time as the official judging panel.  We will then vote to decide our winner, and see if we pick the same book!

The shortlisted books will be announced in the Sunday Times this week - 3 November and we are really excited about taking part.

The Sunday Times/University of Warwick Young Writer of the Year Award is awarded for a full-length published or self-published (in book or ebook formats) work of fiction, non-fiction or poetry, by an author aged 18 - 35 years.

The winner receives £5,000, and there are three prizes of £500 each for runners-up.

The winning book will be a work of outstanding literary merit.

The award is an annual prize administered by the Society of Authors.

The Shadow Panel

As well as myself, the other shadow panelists include:

Linda Hill of Linda's Book Bag

David Harris of Blue Book Balloon

Clare Reynolds of Years Of Reading Selfishly

Phoebe Williams of The Brixton Bookworm

You can follow everything about the award on Twitter @youngwriteryear, or by using #YoungWriterAwardShadow to see what the shadow panel is up to!

The Official Judging Panel

The award-winning poet, writer and teacher Kate Clanchy and the best-selling author Victoria Hislop will join Andrew Holgate to judge The Sunday Times / University of Warwick Young Writer of the Year Award this year. Submissions for the 2019 prize will close on Saturday, 15th June 2019.

Kate Clanchy’s new book, Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me, which looks over her 30-year career in teaching, is garnering huge critical acclaim. Her poetry collection Slattern received a Forward Prize, her short story ‘The Not-Dead and the Saved’ won both the 2009 BBC National Short Story Award and the VS Pritchett Memorial Prize. Meeting the English, a novel, was shortlisted for the Costa Prize. In 2018, she was awarded an MBE for services to literature.

Victoria Hislop’s new novel, Those Who Are Loved, is set against the backdrop of the German occupation of Greece. Her books have been translated into more than 35 languages and have been bestsellers in China, Greece, France, Israel, Norway and the UK. She has won several literary awards in France and recently received an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Sheffield. She worked as a journalist and in publishing before writing her first novel, The Island, inspired by her love of Greece. Widely considered a modern classic, it sold over 5 million copies worldwide, and was turned into a 26 -part Greek TV series.

Andrew Holgate has been the Literary Editor of The Sunday Times for ten years, and before that was the Deputy Literary Editor for nine. He has worked in bookselling, publishing and literary journalism, and has judged many other prizes, including the Samuel Johnson Award and the Somerset Maugham.

Keep a look out for my Young Writer of the Year blog posts over the next few weeks. I'll be telling you all about the shortlisted books, and what I thought about them!