Entries for this year’s Isle of Wight Book Awards are now all in with an impressive 22 titles submitted.
The 3 judges, Alan Titchmarsh (children’s), Hunter Davies (non-fiction) and author/ publicist Georgina Moore (fiction), will now be hunkering down to pore over the entries and the winners will be announced at the grand awards dinner at the Island Sailing Club in Cowes on Tuesday 3rd October.
The event will mark the opening of the Isle of Wight Literary Festival with whom the awards are now affiliated.
Organiser and long-time bookseller, Paul Armfield, from Medina Bookshop in Cowes, has said:
“There has always been a very healthy and very steady supply of new titles either set on the Island, about the Island or by local authors, but in recent years this seems to be increasing.”
“It’s encouraging that as the number of titles increase, so too does the overall quality of both the writing and the production. I think the judges will have a difficult job on their hands this year.”
Tickets will soon be on sale for the awards dinner which will also have a fundraising element to raise funds for Independent Arts, a local charity that use the arts to improve the wellbeing, quality of life and to reduce social isolation of those most vulnerable, they will be giving a short presentation to explain the work they do.
The complete list of entrants is as follows:
Children’s:
Maddie the Baddie by Alan Barbara
Finn’s Isle of Wight Adventure by Mark Staveley
A Red Sky by Jo Cooper
Twice Hexed by Julia Tuffs
Treachery by Michael E Wills
Fiction:
Advocatus by Alex Turner
Good Neighbours by Mary Grand
The Wyght Island Chronicles – Book 1: The Piper by Matthew Ryan
Death on the Isle by M.H. Eccleston
The Uninvited by Sarah Alberts
Non-fiction:
Hampshire Heroes: Volunteer Fighters in the Spanish Civil War by Alan Lloyd
Living with Samba by Anna Hardy
Losten Phase One: Losten Foundry and the 21 by Matthew Wade
How Tennis Invented Everything by Chris Branden
Rough Diamond – Notes from a Big Island by George East
Bugsy, Slug, The Beatles and Me: A Memoir by Hazel Spire
Together by Stephanie Mackrill
Yarmouth and Shalfleet- Coastal Town and Country Parish by Jill Cowley
Why Am I Doing This by Rosemary Bish
Undaunted by Susan Gayner
Isle And Empires by Stephan Roman
Out On An Island edited by Franko Figueiredo-Stow and Caroline Diamond
