Waterstones Booksellers Limited, trading as Waterstones, is a British book retailer that operates 311 shops, mainly in the United Kingdom and also other nearby countries. As of February 2014, it employs around 3,500 staff in the UK and Europe. An average-sized Waterstones shop sells a range of approximately 30,000 individual books, as well as stationery and other related products.
Malorie Blackman is a British writer who held the position of Children's Laureate from 2013 to 2015. She primarily writes literature and television drama for children and young adults. She has used science fiction to explore social and ethical issues, for example, her Noughts and Crosses series uses the setting of a fictional alternative Britain to explore racism. Blackman has been the recipient of many honours for her work, including the 2022 PEN Pinter Prize.
Julia Golding, pen names Joss Stirling and Eve Edwards, is a British novelist best known for her Cat Royal series and The Companions Quartet.
The Waterstones Children's Book Prize is an annual award given to a work of children's literature published during the previous year. First awarded in 2005, the purpose of the prize is "to uncover hidden talent in children's writing" and is therefore open only to authors who have published no more than two or three books, depending on which category they are in. The prize is awarded by British book retailer Waterstones.
Sally Nicholls is a prize-winning British children's book author.
Oneworld Publications is a British independent publishing firm founded in 1986 by Novin Doostdar and Juliet Mabey originally to publish accessible non-fiction by experts and academics for the general market. Based in London, it later added a literary fiction list and both a children's list and an upmarket crime list, and now publishes across a wide range of subjects, including history, politics, current affairs, popular science, religion, philosophy, and psychology, as well as literary fiction, crime fiction and suspense, and children's titles.
Anthony John McGowan is an English author of books for children, teenagers and adults. He is the winner of the 2020 CILIP Carnegie Medal for Lark.
Lucy Christopher is a British/Australian author best known for her novel Stolen, which won the Branford Boase award 2010 in the UK, and the 2010 Gold Inky in Australia. Her second book, Flyaway, was shortlisted for the 2010 Costa Book Awards and the 2010 Waterstone's Children's Book Prize. She currently lives between Australia and the United Kingdom and has just finished her first book for an adult audience, RELEASE.
Manjeet Mann is an actress and writer. Her novel The Crossing won the 2022 Costa Book Award for Children's Book.
Kiran Ann Millwood Hargrave FRSL is a British poet, playwright and novelist. In 2023, she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Mandy Theresa O'Loughlin, known professionally as Kit de Waal, is a British/Irish writer. Her debut novel, My Name Is Leon, was published by Penguin Books in June 2016. After securing the publishing deal with Penguin, De Waal used some of her advance to set up the Kit de Waal Creative Writing Scholarship to help improve working-class representation in the arts. The audiobook version of My Name is Leon is voiced by Sir Lenny Henry. De Waal has also published short stories, including the collection Supporting Cast (2020). She is visiting professor in Creative Writing at the University of Leicester.
Katherine Rundell is an English author and academic. She is the author of Impossible Creatures, named Waterstones Book of the Year for 2023. She is also the author of Rooftoppers, which in 2015 won both the overall Waterstones Children's Book Prize and the Blue Peter Book Award for Best Story, and was short-listed for the Carnegie Medal. She is a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford and has appeared as an expert guest on BBC Radio 4 programmes including Start the Week, Poetry Please, Seriously.... and Private Passions.
The Jhalak Prize for Book of the Year by a Writer of Colour is an annual literary prize awarded to British or British-resident BAME writers. £1,000 is awarded to the sole winner.
Onjali Qatara Raúf is a British author and the founder of the two NGOs: Making Herstory, a woman's rights organisation tackling the abuse and trafficking of women and girls in the UK; and O's Refugee Aid Team, which raises awareness and funds to support refugee frontline aid organisations.
Nikesh Shukla FRSL is a British author and screenwriter. His writing focuses on race, racism, identity, and immigration. He is the editor of the 2016 collection of essays The Good Immigrant, which features contributions from Riz Ahmed, Musa Okwonga, Bim Adewunmi, and Reni Eddo-Lodge, among others. With Chimène Suleyman, he co-edited the 2019 follow-up collection called The Good Immigrant: 26 Writers Reflect On America.
Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire is a 2019 British book by the rapper Akala. Part memoir, the book provides race and class analysis of a variety of historical eras, in addition to contemporary British society. It received positive critical reception, in addition to nominations for the Jhalak Prize and James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and saw renewed attention following the May 2020 murder of George Floyd in America.
Elle McNicoll is a Scottish and British bestselling children's literature writer. McNicoll has been described as "undoubtedly an outstanding new talent in children's books [who] will inspire readers young and old for generations to come".
Jasbinder Bilan is an Indian-born British author and teacher.
Sita Brahmachari is a British author known for her work in children's and young adult literature. Her debut novel, Artichoke Hearts, later published in the United States as Mira in the Present Tense, won the 2011 Waterstones Children's Book Prize.
The YA Book Prize is a British literary award established by publishing magazine The Bookseller in 2014. The accolade is given to young adult novels published by an author in the United Kingdom or Ireland in the previous year.
