Running towards hope
Manjeet Mann’s debut novel, Run Rebel, was an instant classic, picking up fans and awards as it told the story of Amber and her family looking for ways to escape her brutal father.
TOLD in verse, Run Rebel, was named as the Diverse Book Awards Young Adult winner for 2021, and picked up CILIP’s Shadower’s Choice Award. Both awards come with the stamp of approval from “real readers”.
Manjeet, an actor and playwright as well as an author, says the seed of the story was sown a few years before she wrote Run Rebel. Based on a short extract from one of her own plays, she says: “The first play I wrote was a solo show and it was a performance poetry piece – a comedy-drama about a woman who was training to run the London Marathon. As she is running the marathon, she has a mental breakdown, and has all these flashbacks to her younger self. There is one scene in there where she goes back to her teenage years, it’s probably only two minutes long and I remember at the time thinking that this character, this younger version of herself, could be a book. In 2015 I wrote in my journal one sentence – and it was ‘Girl who loves to run, but comes from a difficult home life – possible teenage novel’. And literally, that was it, but this idea just wouldn’t leave me.” Loosely autobiographical, Run Rebel also draws on wider experiences of abuse and control in the family. It has resonated with readers on many different levels, with Manjeet saying: “I had a lot of people get in touch – teenagers and
Spring-Summer 2021
adults. From some young people saying ‘this is my life, and I feel seen and I feel heard’. One girl said ‘I’ve never seen myself in a book before, and I now feel that I can make a change in my life.’ That is very powerful for me to hear. “I’ve had older readers saying I wish I had this book when I was younger because I might have had the confidence to make some changes. People are saying that they wished they had this book when they were younger, and in many ways I was writing Run Rebel for my younger self. It’s a book I wish I had had when I was a teenager.
“Then I have other readers saying they had no idea about what some people are going through. For instance, there is a bit in the book where Amber is falling asleep in the class and the teacher says ‘less TV next time’, but actually, Amber is falling asleep in class because her parents are having a really bad argument the night before and she couldn’t sleep. A teacher told me that after reading that they looked again at how some of the kids in
her class were. It really made her look at herself and think differently about the children in her class – to be a bit more empathetic.
“Then I have young people say ‘this is not my life, but I’m glad I have read it because it has helped me see into someone else’s life’.”
Manjeet believes that part of that ability to cut through to readers, with verse giving readers both a physical space on the page as well as mental space to think about the issues. She says: “There is something about verse novels that make them great for teen audiences, because verse is quite accessible. Personally, I love them.
“People tell me that I write quite dark and quite raw, and I think that verse novels allow you to do that and deal with really difficult subjects. With verse there is white space on the page that allows you to think about those darker subjects – the reader gets more space to read through the lines. I think they lend themselves to that darker source material, and I think that is why I love them, and why they chime with audiences.”
Manjeet says that her acting was the catalyst for her to begin writing because “I was getting bored of the parts I was getting. I thought rather than moan about it I would do something. I had seen a lot of other actors who were writing their own plays and screenplays, and casting themselves in the parts they
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