THIS PRESS RELEASE WENT OUT THIS WEEK: HAVE YOU READ IT YET?
What are you waiting for??? 🙂

REMINDER OF DEAD LINE   – it is not too late to enter…..

The closing date for the current Frances Lincoln Diverse Voices Award is Friday 25th February 2011.

“Gather your courage and just do it: this award is the break you’ve been looking for.

Anyone with a secret manuscript in their bottom  drawer or a story brewing in their head should enter the Frances Lincoln Diverse Voices Childrens Book Award. It’s free to enter, you can enter by email, and if you make the shortlist, your writing life will never be the same.”
From Cristy Burne, winner of the inaugural award with Takeshita Demons (selected for Children’s Book Week, Booked Up and January 2011 Blue Peter Book Club title)

“Hello all you budding writers,

Just a year ago I was in your shoes, attempting feverishly to finish that manuscript ready for the big deadline.  The good news is that you still have time.  You still have time to tweak that bit of dialogue, tidy up that plot twist and sharpen that characterisation.

Diverse Voices gives you the opportunity to meet some wonderful people, have your manuscript read by a host of excellent critics and possibly work with the great team at Frances Lincoln to publish your book.  So don’t give-up, don’t stop now, don’t falter at the final hurdle.

All the very best, hopefully meet you one day!”
From Tom Avery, winner of the 2010 award with Too Much Trouble (publication: June 2011)

Frances Lincoln Limited, the award-winning publisher, and Seven Stories, the Centre for Children’s Books, are delighted with the success to date of the Diverse Voices Award, set up in memory of Frances Lincoln (1945-2001) to encourage and promote diversity in children’s fiction. The prize of £1,500 plus the option for Janetta Otter-Barry at Frances Lincoln Children’s Books to publish the novel is awarded to the best manuscript for 8-to-12-year-olds that celebrates diversity in the widest possible sense.

“The exceptional quality of the winners of the first two awards is a real measure of the success of our Diverse Voices joint venture with Seven Stories.

And by the time the third winner is announced in June 2011 I will have commissioned or published six books by writers who entered the award: the Takeshita Demons trilogy by Cristy Burne, winner of the inaugural award, Too Much Trouble by Tom Avery, the 2010 winner, and A Hen in the Wardrobe and Chess and Chapattis, the first two titles in the Cinnamon Grove series by Wendy Meddour, who entered the 2009 award.

I am proud that the Frances Lincoln Diverse Voices Award is achieving exactly what it set out to do – to discover and encourage new writers of exciting, culturally diverse fiction.”
From Janetta Otter-Barry at Frances Lincoln Children’s Books

For full details about the award and to download an entry form go to
www.sevenstories.org.uk

Alternatively, contact the Award Co-ordinator, Helena McConnell by email diversevoices@sevenstories.org.uk or helena@sevenstories.org.uk