I’m delighted to tell you that we’ve chosen Imogen Hermes Gowar’s The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock as our shadow panel winner for this year’s Young Writer of the Year Award. You can visit the award’s site here to read their announcement.
Not an easy list to judge – each book is very different from the others, and each book is exceptionally good. All deserve recognition and the widest of readerships.
Andrew Holgate, Kamila Shamsie and Susan Hill will deliver their verdict at the London Library next Thursday where the prize will be awarded.
It’s been a delight to be involved with this prize, from reading each of the excellent titles to meeting my fellow shadow judges and blogger friends at the Groucho Club. It was a pleasure to work with Amanda (Bookish Chat), Lizzi (These Little Words), Lucy (The Literary Edit) and Paul (HalfMan, HalfBook) who cast the decisive vote from the train he’d been stranded on for hours. If you’re a blogger reading this and you haven’t yet signed up to the prize’s mailing list, please do. It’s a lovely thing to be associated with.
You can find out more about the award by visiting www.youngwriteraward or following @youngwriteryear.
Hurrah! A good choice.
Thank you! I so wanted to ask her more about what she was working on at the bloggers’ event but that’s not a question all writers welcome, understandably.
All she’d tell me was that it’s set in the 20th century and not a WWII novel (thank God). I think it’ll be quite different to Mermaid!
Well, that narrows it down! I’m sure it will.
Yay! This one is on my stack. I’ve enjoyed reading through your reviews and I’m following the event online now too.
A perfect winter read! Thank you. I have thought how lovely it would have been for you shadow Gillers to meet, too, but obviously there were a few geographical constraints.
Two of us are still trying to work out the details to meet here. Apparently even with both of us in Toronto it’s still very tricky. Heheh
Fingers crossed!