Sunday 18 January 2009

Patrick Ness wins Booktrust Teenage Prize

Patrick Ness rounded off a successful 2008 by winning the Booktrust Teenage Prize for his novel, The Knife of Never Letting Go.

The announcement was made at a prizegiving ceremony in London, where Patrick was presented with a trophy and a cheque for £2,500.

The Knife of Never Letting Go is Patrick's first novel for teenagers and has been widely acclaimed, winning him the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize, a longlisting for the Carnegie Medal and a placing as one of Amazon's top 100 books for 2008.

Speaking at the ceremony, Chair of Judges, Amanda Craig said, "In a strong year for Young Adult fiction, the judges of the Booktrust Teenage Prize selected six novels that we all felt were outstanding for the scope of their imagination, their originality, their writing and their appeal.

The Knife of Never Letting Go made the judges laugh, cry and debate its contents with passion; a striking mixture of thriller, science fiction and literary tour de force, it's influenced by writers as diverse as Laurence Sterne and Ursula le Guin and should appeal to a large readership."


The Booktrsust Teenage Prize judges included five children who won their places on the judging panel by submitting the best entries to a Booktrust competition. (Writers' News Feb 2009)

3 comments:

Life said...

Hi,

I found your blog when searching for munch bunch lapland winner, Hope it's an omen for you, website says winners will be announced in January... Having seen 'proper' writers apllied I'll give up with that one.
I wondered if you could spare 2 minutes to vote for my photo in a comp - I seem to move between 2nd and 3rd place, made the mistake of telling my children about it too, oh no the pressure!
To vote you need to register with site, only with email address, screen name & password, they send activation email, click on that & you can vote.

The tortoise in the pic also has a blog, please feel free to pop by.

Nice to have 'met' you

MT

Dorothy Massey said...

It certainly was an omen for me. I found out yesterday that I'm one of the winners. I'm off to London next week to attend the recording of the podcast. I'll check out you blog and photo. Good luck with the competitions. Don't be afraid to enter them. Winning a competition got me my first commission as a children's story writer. Dorothy

Life said...

Hi

Sorry i have just seen your reply! Many many congratulations, alittle jealous of Lapland though! Look forward to reading about it :o)