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Mya-Rose Craig's Birdgirl was selected as a 2023 Winner of the Somerset Maugham Award. Prize judge Fred D'Aguiar said, "Mya-Rose Craig embraces the widest world available to nonfiction as global in cahoots with the local. Her nature writing intersects with culture and politics so that Birdgirl is badass for its many emblems of resistance to global capital's eradication of species and planet. Her studies of her mother's mental illness could not be more nuanced as love, care and focused outrage at a health system in terminal decline. Birdgirl elevates our thinking about how a plural approach to a planetary problem may well yield remedies for a more secure future." Birdgirl was published on June 30, 2022 by Jonathan Cape.  Follow the link for more information: https://www2.societyofauthors....

Noelle McCarthy’s Grand won the Mātātuhi Foundation-sponsored E.H. MCCORMICK AWARD FOR NON FICTION for the best first book at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards.  The judges said, “This exquisite debut masterfully weaves together the threads of Noelle McCarthy’s life, and her relationship with her mother, in a memoir that connects with truths that unite us all. Poignant and poetic language renders scenes with honesty and colour. Intimate, but highly accessible, the fragility and turbulence of the mother-daughter relationship is at times brutally detailed. Despite this, Grand is an uplifting memoir, delicate and self-aware, and a credit to McCarthy’s generosity and literary deftness.” For further information about the awards including more pics of Noelle to come, you can see them here: https://www.nzbookawards.nz/new-zealand-book-awards/2023-awards/winners/

We are delighted to share that Mya-Rose Craig's BIRDGIRL has made the longlist of this year's Jhalak Prize. "First awarded in March 2017, the Jhalak Prize and its new sister award Jhalak Children’s & YA Prize founded in 2020, seek to celebrate books by British/British resident BAME writers." Birdwatching has never felt like a hobby, or a pastime I can pick up and put down, but a thread running through the pattern of my life, so tightly woven in that there's no way of pulling it free and leaving the rest of my life intact. Meet Mya-Rose - otherwise known as 'Birdgirl'. Birder, environmentalist, diversity activist. To date she has seen over five thousand different types of bird: half the world's species. Every single bird a treasure. Each sighting a small step in her family journey - a collective moment of joy and stillness amidst her mother's deepening mental health crisis. And each helping her to find her voice. Since she was young, she has visited every continent to pursue her passion, seeing first-hand the inequality and reckless destruction we are inflicting on our fragile planet. And the simple, mindful act of looking for birds has made her ever-more determined to campaign for all our survival. This is her story; a journey defined by her love for these extraordinary creatures. Because large or small, brown, patterned or jewelled, there is something about birds that makes us, even for just moments at a time, lift our eyes away from our lives and up to the skies. The shortlist will be announced 18th April. Congratulations Mya-Rose! 

Mo Wilde's THE WILDERNESS CURE has won the John Avery Award at the André Simon Food and Drink Book awards. "This year's winners demonstrate the continued evolution of food and drink writing, highlighting the exciting new voices emerging in the industry." Foraging is one of the last wild acts of defiance against the concrete world. Humans versus humanoids. It's a crack in the dam, a chink of light, wild food nourishes your very soul. Mo Wilde made a quiet but radical pledge: to live only off foraged food for an entire year. In a world disconnected from its roots, eating wild food is both culinary and healing, social and political. This is the story of that year. Set against the backdrop of climate change, Brexit and the impending recession, The Wilderness Cure is a diary of a wild experiment; a timely, important and inspiring memoir which is a love letter to the natural world.

We are delighted to share that Kiran Millwood Hargrave's JULIA AND THE SHARK has been shortlisted for this year's Barnes & Noble Children's and YA Book Awards. The title publishes this month in the US with Union Square & Co. Shortlisted for the Waterstones Book of the Year 2021 Shortlisted for the James Cropper Wainwright Prize for Children's Writing on Nature & Conservation 2022 'Days before lockdown there was a fire in my studio that destroyed twelve years worth of work. From the burnt out husk I rescued burnt frames, bags of ash, fragments of destroyed artworks. Much of the artwork for Julia and the Shark was made using these materials, as an act of mourning, transformation and repair. It reflects the central message of the book, that even in the deepest darkness there is always the light of hope.' - Tom de Freston A timeless story of family, hope and environmental crisis from the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize-winning author of The Girl of Ink and Stars that is also a stunning work of visual art, Julia and the Shark has been taken to our booksellers’ hearts like no other children’s novel. When her father is required to repair an old lighthouse on a remote island, Julia finds herself on a strange and magical summer holiday. Her mother becomes increasingly determined to find the great Greenland shark – an awesome yet elusive creature that soon fills Julia’s thoughts as well. But when her mother’s determination tips over into obsession, Julia is forced to dive into an adventure with hidden depths and turbulent emotional currents which threatens to submerge them all. With breathtaking black, white and yellow illustrations created using the ashes from the fire that destroyed de Freston's studio, Julia and the Shark is both a testament to artistic rebirth and an exquisite reflection on family, science and the fragile yet sublime beauty of the environment. Intoxicating and impossible to put down, it is a future classic whose beauty and heart will resound for generations.

Monica Heisey's laugh-out-loud debut REALLY GOOD, ACTUALLY has spent four weeks straight in the Sunday Times bestseller list and sold over 170,000 copies through TCM. This huge success follows on from a UK-wide events tour and a marketing campaign that centered around "a strategically planned approach to retail marketing" with the aim to incentivise support. REALLY GOOD, ACTUALLY is one of the most hotly anticipated, hilarious and addictive debut novels of 2023, from Schitt's Creek screenwriter and electric new voice in fiction, Monica Heisey. I feel like when you get a divorce everyone's wondering how you ruined it all, what made you so unbearable to be with. If your husband dies, at least people feel bad for you. Maggie's marriage has ended just 608 days after it started, but she's fine - she's doing really good, actually. Sure, she's alone for the first time in her life, can't afford her rent and her obscure PhD is going nowhere... but at the age of twenty-nine, Maggie is determined to embrace her new status as a Surprisingly Young Divorcee ™. Soon she's taking up 'sadness hobbies' and getting back out there, sex-wise, oversharing in the group chat and drinking with her high-intensity new divorced friend Amy. As Maggie throws herself headlong into the chaos of her first year of divorce, she finds herself questioning everything, including: Why do we still get married? Did I fail before I even got started? How many Night Burgers until I'm happy? Laugh-out-loud funny, razor sharp and painfully relatable, Really Good, Actually is an irresistible debut novel about the uncertainties of modern love, friendship and happiness from a stunning new voice in fiction, Monica Heisey.

Yasmin Rahman's WHY IS NOBODY LAUGHING? has made it to the 2023 ABA shortlist. 'Established in 2011 by four West Sussex School Librarians the Amazing Book Awards, aka The ABAs, were created to give local students a strong personal voice.'  The winner will be announced 16th June.  Will the real Ibrahim Malik please stand up?  Ibrahim and Dexter have been best friends forever. While Dexter is always cool and confident, Ibrahim...well, Ibrahim's dealing with a lot. Hiding his passion for comedy from his family, dealing with the pressure of being the oldest child in an immigrant family, and now he's started having episodes he soon realises are panic attacks. When Ibrahim has a panic attack on stage at a local stand-up competition, he runs off to a deserted room.  There he finds Sura. Sura is kind and helps him come to terms with his anxiety. He can open up to her in a way he's never been able to with Dexter. But there's also something strange about her - how much she knows about Ibrahim, and how she seems to disappear in an instant. Will Ibrahim crumble under the pressure, or will Sura's words be enough to help him? And what will happen when he no longer has her help?

Kiran Millwood Hargrave's JULIA AND THE SHARK has been longlisted for this year's Yoto Carnegie Medal for writing. This medal is awarded to 'a children’s book author whose writing creates an outstanding reading experience'. JULIA AND THE SHARK tells a timeless story of family, hope and environmental crisis from the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize-winning author of THE GIRL OF INK AND STARS. When her father is required to repair an old lighthouse on a remote island, Julia finds herself on a strange and magical summer holiday. Her mother becomes increasingly determined to find the great Greenland shark – an awesome yet elusive creature that soon fills Julia’s thoughts as well. But when her mother’s determination tips over into obsession, Julia is forced to dive into an adventure with hidden depths and turbulent emotional currents which threatens to submerge them all. The title was also shortlisted for the Waterstones Book of the Year 2021 and the James Cropper Wainwright Prize for Children's Writing on Nature and Conservation 2022. The shortlist will be announced 17th March 2023.

We're delighted to see three wonderful J&N authors' books chosen for this year's Read for Empathy collection. Every year the Empathy Lab's expert panel chooses books for their 'empathy-building power'. The chosen books explore a range of timely themes including food poverty and homelessness, identity, handling emotions, understanding different cultures and changing society for the better.  This year includes THE GOOD TURN by Sharna Jackson, THIS IS MY TRUTH by Yasmin Rahman and OUR SISTER, AGAIN by Sophie Cameron.

Gillian Anderson's has launched 'generation-defining' project that invites all women to write to her and reveal their sexual fantasies. The letters will be collected and edited by Gillian and included anonymously in a 'generation-defining' book to be published by Bloomsbury. Inspired by Nancy Friday's cult hit from 1973 My Secret Garden: Women's Sexual Fantasies, Gillian hopes this book 'cuts right to the heart of what it is to be a woman today. A book that will hopefully inspire women for generations to come.'  In an article for The Guardian, Gillian wrote 'I want women across the world, and all of you who identify intrinsically as women now – queer, heterosexual and bisexual, non-binary, transgender, polyamorous – all of you, old and young, whatever your religion, and married, single or other, to write to me and tell me what you think about when you think about sex. Whether it’s when you’re having it by yourself or with a partner, or with more than one. Tell me. Fantasies, frustrations, explorations, the forbidden, childhood, sounds, fetishes, guilt, insatiability. Fifty years on, the boundaries have been erased, no more so than in our own sexuality: BDSM, the modern meaning of gender etc, anything is up for grabs. Are women still the silent sex? I suppose that is one of the things we’re going to find out. I’m hoping your voices from diverse nationalities and backgrounds will shed light on just how far we have come since 1973.'  Submissions for the project opened this month and will stay open until midnight, 28th February 2023. Letters can be submitted at deargillian.com.   Photo credit: Olivier Vigerie 

We are thrilled to see Monica Heisey's REALLY GOOD, ACTUALLY at number 4 in the Sunday Times Bestseller list. This is its second week in the charts after it landed in at number 2 in The Sunday Times on publication. Huge congratulations Monica! REALLY GOOD, ACTUALLY is one of the most hotly anticipated, hilarious and addictive debut novels of 2023, from Schitt's Creek screenwriter and electric new voice in fiction, Monica Heisey. I feel like when you get a divorce everyone's wondering how you ruined it all, what made you so unbearable to be with. If your husband dies, at least people feel bad for you. Maggie's marriage has ended just 608 days after it started, but she's fine - she's doing really good, actually. Sure, she's alone for the first time in her life, can't afford her rent and her obscure PhD is going nowhere... but at the age of twenty-nine, Maggie is determined to embrace her new status as a Surprisingly Young Divorcee ™. Soon she's taking up 'sadness hobbies' and getting back out there, sex-wise, oversharing in the group chat and drinking with her high-intensity new divorced friend Amy. As Maggie throws herself headlong into the chaos of her first year of divorce, she finds herself questioning everything, including: Why do we still get married? Did I fail before I even got started? How many Night Burgers until I'm happy? Laugh-out-loud funny, razor sharp and painfully relatable, Really Good, Actually is an irresistible debut novel about the uncertainties of modern love, friendship and happiness from a stunning new voice in fiction, Monica Heisey. Photo credit: Yuli Scheidt

We're delighted to share that Jarred McGinnis has been chosen for the Eccles Centre & Hay Festival Writer's Award 2023. He won along with fellow writer, Ayanna Lloyd Banwo, and both will receive £20,000 and up to a year's writing residency at the British Library. They will also get the chance to showcase their work at Hay Festival events in the UK and Latin America. The shortlist covered a range of subjects such as migration, environmental breakdown, masculinity, urbanisation, and literary movements and McGinnis was chosen for his work, The Mountain Weight; a memoir that will unearth his family history from the American Civil War to today. It will look at themes of masculinity, family and migration and consider the myths we create about ourselves and the idea of family to help explain who we are and who we want to be. The judges said: "McGinnis' The Mountain Weight uses a biographical lens to explore themes of masculinity and generational violence in the United States. We were impressed by the emotional power of McGinnis' proposal and the proposed use of archival material to tell an intimate story and broad social history."

We are delighted to announce Oliver Harrop as the winner of the Janklow & Nesbit Bath Spa Prize 2022. We were overwhelmed by the talent, skill and range of entries this year, but Oliver's work stood out to us as being something truly unique. Huge congratulations Oliver!

We are delighted to announce fourth-time shortlistee Elly Griffith's has been longlisted this year for her novel THE NIGHT HAWKS. Simon Theakston, Executive Director of Theakston, said: "Crime fiction seems to have an enduring popularity with readers, and this year?s longlist is a clear indication as to why. Books from iconic writers and impressive debuts demonstrate the wonderful talent working in the genre today ? the public have got a hard job ahead of them voting for a shortlist of only six! We raise a glass of Old Peculier to all the authors on the longlist, and look forward to a celebratory drink with our Award winner in July." Voting for the shortlist closes 26th May with winner voting opening 14th June. The winner will be announced 21st July at the opening night of this year's Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival.