We are delighted to announce literary agent Jessica Hare as judge for the Bath Children’s Novel Award 2023. Jessica runs the Children’s Books department at The Agency where she represents authors writing for every age and genre, as well as illustrators, and is one of The Bookseller’s Rising Stars for 2023.
The Bath Children’s Novel Award 2023 is a £3,000 international prize for emerging writers of children’s novels, YA novels, chapter books and picture book texts. Recipients include Struan Murray for the manuscript of Orphans of the Tide (published by Puffin in 2020), Lucy Van Smit for The Hurting (Chickenhouse, 2018) and Matthew Fox for The Sky Over Rebecca (Hachette, 2022).
Submissions are invited until 23:59 GMT on November 30th with the longlist announced in December and a shortlist chosen by Junior Judges aged seven to seventeen over the Christmas holidays. Jessica will judge the overall winning manuscript which will be announced in February 2024.
The winner will receive £3,000 plus an exclusive Minerva trophy based on the iconic statue at Bath’s Roman Baths. All shortlisted authors win a compilation of the Junior Judges’ reports on their full manuscript, and all longlistees win feedback from Cornerstones Literary Consultancy’s Editorial Director. One longlistee will also win a place on the 18 week online course Edit Your Novel the Professional Way, courtesy of Professional Writing Academy and Cornerstones Literary Consultancy.
The Bath Children’s Novel Award 2023 is open to unagented writers of any nationality or residency and full details of the prize terms and eligibility can be found here.
“So much of the writing process is in your head or on your own in a room. It feels like such a leap to put work out to people and it is a joy and a relief to have it accepted and validated.”
INTERVIEW: Truly Johnston, winner of The Bath Children’s Novel Award 2022