I won the Hachette Children's Novel Award 2023 at the prestigious Northern Writers Awards!
As an emerging writer, winning a Northern Writers Award has been a huge achievement for me. Supported by Arts Council England and Northumbria University, these awards from New Writing North are dedicated to nurturing up and coming writers from the North of England.
I entered my mystery story, my first longer novel for 9-12 year olds, into the 2023 Hachette Children’s Novel Award. I’ll let you in on a secret (well, not so secret, anymore!) – when I entered the awards, I hadn’t actually finished writing my winning novel. But I thought I could. So, I sent in the first few chapters, and wrote my socks off to make sure that if I got longlisted, I could submit the whole manuscript. When I made the list, I had enough time to finish the last couple of chapters, tidy up the manuscript, and sent it off, thinking it was amazing my novel had got that far.
So, I couldn’t believe it when I found out my manuscript had won! I celebrated the win at the Northern Writers Awards ceremony in Newcastle in June 2023.
Since then, New Writing North have provided me with invaluable support and encouragement. They’ve given me lots of opportunities, including membership of the Society of Authors, development support and access to their activities. And I’ve also been part of a mentoring programme with Hachette Children’s Group, where I’ve learnt more about the world of children’s publishing, and I’ve been working with their editors to get my novel ready for publication.
And this led to me securing a Developing Your Creative Practice grant from Arts Council England for 2023 to 2024, which is supporting my creative writing development!
What’s next? Watch this space. I’m approaching agents and publishers, as well as exploring self-publishing. But it’s definitely going to make it out into the world soon…
