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Sarah Brooks' novel (winner 2019) The Cautious Traveller's Guide to the Wastelands was signed by W&N and will be published in summer 2024 UK. Rights have sold in 10 territories worldwide.

Read my Guardian newspaper article about my work with Minority Mattersand teaching in London h ere. This talk gave us a sobering insight into the lives of inner- city youth, but was presented with a positive attitude and the humble hope that the book will go some way to preventing future tragedies.

Applying to study in October 2020?

I grew up in Devon, France and West Sussex. I studied English Literature at university and have taught in secondary schools for 23 years, including 15 years at an inner-city London comprehensive.

Since its foundation in 2010, the Prize has been a starting point in numerous entrants’ success stories giving them the platform to launch successful and ongoing careers as novelists, including: My own agency The Good Literary Agency was set up to make publishing more accessible to underrepresented groups. Having a literary agency that is just for writers of colour, working class, disabled, and LGBT+ writers, shows that publishers are taking on authors and stories in the mainstream, and that is a brilliant change in publishing.Emily Midorikawa (2015 winner) and Emma Claire Sweeney published A Secret Sisterhood to wide acclaim. Publisher: Mariner Books. The message I took away from the novel was that despite all the inequalities of this world there is always hope for justice. Sometimes you just have to be the one to stand up and make a change.

Sara Collins The Confessions of Frannie Langton , (2016 shortlist) winner of the 2019 Costa First Novel Award, was published by HarperCollins and translated into more than fourteen languages, optioned for television, filming now.On her interview day she was taken on an unauthorised tour of the school by three scruffy 6 th Formers who demanded to know why she wanted to teach in their …….. school. The school was in Special Measures and had families living in poverty and using food banks. Gangs and drugs featured in the lives of some pupils and unsettled home lives affected student performance. She dedicated the book to one of her students, a Somali who, though not in a gang, was killed on the streets of London. After this tragedy she was moved to write a book about the humour, loyalty and resilience of students disadvantaged by poverty and unsettled home lives. It was also to be a warning to young people against carrying knives and guns. She wrote the book in six weeks but spent a long time in editing. Compromises on the language e.g. toning down the students’ language, had to be made to enable the book to reach a wider audience of young people and students.