Was it your New Year’s Resolution to write a book? Yes? Then here’s your chance to get it done and get it published.

Shami Chakrabarti, Director of Liberty (The National Council for Civil Liberties), and Alex Wheatle MBE, the award-winning British novelist of Jamaican heritage, have joined the judging panel of The Frances Lincoln Diverse Voices Award.

This is terrific news for anybody who has never published a childrens novel but has always longed to write one….

Grab on and enjoy the ride: the Diverse Voices award is for YOU!!!

I won this award back in 2009 and now have four books coming out with Frances Lincoln Childrens Books in the UK, and Walker Books in New Zealand and Australia, not to mention translations in Indonesia, Finland and more. This is a REALLY BIG CHANCE, so go to it!

The award is for a manuscript that celebrates cultural diversity in the widest possible sense, either in terms of its story or in terms of the ethnic and cultural origins of its author.

The prize of £1,500, plus the option for Frances Lincoln Children’s Books to publish the novel, will be awarded to the best work of unpublished fiction for 8–to-12-year-olds by a writer, aged 18 years or over, who has not previously published a novel for children. The writer may have contributed to an anthology of prose or poetry.

The work must be written in English and it must be a minimum of 15,000 words and a maximum of 35,000 words. Previously submitted manuscripts which were not short-listed may be re-entered two more times.

The closing date for all entries is Monday 31 December 2012.

You can download the 2013 Diverse Voices Award leaflet here, and stick it up on your wall (or your friend’s wall), and you can download the entry forms here.

So go, go, go…and I wish you best of luck!!

(With thanks to matryosha for the photo)