the characters of scullery maid Nell and her wealthy boss’ nephew Johnny. Fellow YA Book Prize winner Jaigirdar is also in the running for this year’s award for romcom Four Eids and a Funeral (Usborne), which is co-written with Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé. In it, former best friends and now sworn enemies Said and Tiwa are brought back together by a funeral and a fire at their home town’s Islamic Centre. Jaigirdar received the YA Book Prize for Hani and Ishu’s Guide to Fake Dating in 2022, while Àbíké-Íyímídé’s debut thriller Ace of Spades was shortlisted in the same year.
Past winners
2024 Lex Croucher ( 3) Gwen & Art Are Not in Love
2023
Danielle Jawando When Our Worlds Collided
The 10 brilliant books on this year’s shortlist cover a wide range of genres, themes and perspectives... They are all engaging, empathetic and entertaining Caroline Carpenter, YA Book Prize chair
YA Book Prize 2023 winner Danielle Jawando
(for When Our Worlds Collided) is shortlisted for If My Words Had Wings (Simon & Schuster Children’s), in which Tyrell tries to turn his life around after ending up in a young offenders’ prison, tackling systemic discrimination and finding his voice through spoken-word poetry. Jawando’s S&S stablemate Catherine Doyle is also nominated for romantasy title The Dagger and the Flame. It tells the story of rival assassins Seraphine and Ransom, who are pitted against each other in a deadly game of revenge, but find themselves making the dangerous mistake of falling in love. The list is completed by two books by former
YA Book Prize nominees: The End Crowns All by Bea Fitzgerald (Penguin) and The Reappearance of Rachel Price by Holly Jackson (Electric Monkey). The End Crowns All is a feminist re-imagining of the Greek myth of Cassandra, who receives the gift of prophecy, and Helen, who fled Sparta in pursuit of love
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and must now navigate the fierce politics and danger of the Trojan court. Thriller The Reappearance of Rachel Price centres on Bel, who has lived her whole life in the shadow of her mother’s mysterious disappearance. The case is dragged up from the past when the Price family agrees to feature in a true-crime documentary and Rachel reappears.
T
he YA Book Prize, now in its 11th year, is run by The Bookseller in partnership with Edinburgh International Book Festival (EIBF) and celebrates the best YA fiction
titles from the UK and Ireland. All of the short- listed authors will be invited to speak on panels at EIBF on 21st August as part of the festival’s school programme, with the winner of the £2,000 award to be announced in a ceremony hosted by writer and activist Laura Bates. The Bookseller’s children’s and deputy
features editor, Caroline Carpenter, who chairs the YA Book Prize, said: “As the prize enters its second decade, it’s heartening to see that children’s publishers are still nurturing new writing talent from the UK and Ireland, as well as investing in developing long-term careers for YA authors. As ever, the 10 brilliant books on this year’s shortlist cover a wide range of genres, themes and perspectives. Many of them spotlight regional voices and characters that are under-represented in books – from young people experiencing the care and prison systems to teenagers from the LGBTQ+ and Muslim communities falling in love – and they are all engaging, empathetic and entertaining.” Carpenter will lead a judging panel that also
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features award-winning children’s and YA author David Almond OBE, fellow author and BookToker Busayo Matuluko, Booka Bookshop’s children’s bookseller Sian Wadey and EIBF’s children and schools programme director Rachel Fox. The quintet will pick the winner with input from teenage readers who have shadowed the prize. Last year’s prize went to Lex Croucher’s Arthurian romantic comedy Gwen & Art Are Not in Love (Bloomsbury YA).
2022
Adiba Jaigirdar Hani and Ishu’s Guide to Fake Dating
2021
Alice Oseman Loveless
2020
Juno Dawson Meat Market
2019
Sara Barnard Goodbye, Perfect
2018
Will Hill After the Fire
2017
Patrice Lawrence Orangeboy
2016
Sarah Crossan One
2015
Louise O’Neill Only Ever Yours
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KATE MCDONALD
HEATHER CALLAGHAN
The YA Book Prize
Feature
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