Over 60 books have been entered for the first ever Isle of Wight Book Awards, which the 3 judges – Alan Titchmarsh, Joanna Trollope and Hunter Davies – consider an amazing achievement for the Island’s first such book awards.
Author Hunter Davies said:
“It is 3 times the number we expected. Has Covid-19 helped? During all the horrible, boring, dreary lock downs perhaps folks on the island have been sitting at home going scribble, scribble, scribble…?”.
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The deadline for entry is coming soon on 5th March. Entry forms are available on the website. The shorts lists will be announced on 5th August, and the winners will be announced at a Grand Literary Lunch in September to which the public are invited.
There will be three categories of awards: for nonfiction, fiction, and children’s books. The authors need not live on the island, can be alive or dead or middling, but each book entered must have some sort of content connected with the island.
Self-published books are allowed – in fact, actively encouraged – as one of the aims of the awards is to help people who perhaps have never written a book before to write about themselves, their lives, their interests, and the Island. Anything goes if there is Isle of Wight content.
For this first year of the awards only, books published in the last five years can also be entered; so, dig them out or contact those you might know who has published any local books recently. In future, the annual awards will be restricted to books published in the previous year.
Three distinguished local sponsors are generously contributing to the lunch and the prize money: Hovertravel, The Isle of Wight Music Festival, and estate agents, Hose Rhodes Dickson, plus help and support from the Medina Bookshop in Cowes and Monkton Arts in Ryde.
If you have already had, or are about to have, the thrill and pleasure and intense satisfaction of producing your very own book on any subject connected with the island, fill in the entry form available on the website, then drop in 3 copies of your finished masterpiece to Medina bookshop in Cowes. Entry is free.
For full details of the rules, details of the awards and entry forms, visit http://www.iowbookawards.co.uk.
