Diverse Book Awards 2020 longlist announced.

The longlist for the Diverse Book Awards 2020, the awards dedicated to diversity in UK writing, was announced on August 24, 2020.

The Diverse Book Awards was created by Abiola Bello and Helen Lewis, founders of The Author School to celebrate the diversity of writing in the UK in November 2019. The new awards are being judged by Hashtag BLAK Commissioning Editor Luisa Maria, This Is Book Love founder Samantha Williams, Pen & Inc Editor Rob Green, and CILIP Youth Libraries Group London Chair Caroline Fielding alongside teenagers Rebekah Banda and Alicia Cruz. This team will look through the texts in the longlists to select the best diverse book in Children’s, Young Adult, and Adult fiction in the UK.

The books in the running for the awards are;

Children’s fiction

• Son of the Circus by E. L. Norry (Scholastic).
• My Hair by Hannah Lee, illustrated by Allen Fatimaharan (Faber & Faber).
• Planet Omar Accidental Trouble Magnet by Zanib Mian, illustrated by Nasaya Mafaridik (Hodder)
• The Mysterious Melody by SP K-Mushambi, illustrated by Kudzai Gumbo (Naniso Media Ltd & Conscious Dreams Publishing).
• The Star Outside My Window by Onjali Q. Rauf (Orion Children’s Books).
• Tin Boy by Steve Cole, illustrated by Oriol Vidal (Barrington Stoke).
• Toad Attack by Patrice Lawrence, illustrated by Becka Moor (Barrington Stoke)

Young Adult

• All The Things We Never Said by Yasmin Rahman (Hot Key Books).
• Becoming Dinah by Kit De Waal (Orion Children’s Books).
• Chinglish: An Almost Entirely True Story by Sue Cheung (Andersen Press).
• Oh My Gods by Alexandra Sheppard (Scholastic).
• The Black Flamingo by Dean Atta (Hodder).
• The Boxer by Nikesh Shukla (Hodder).
• The Deathless Girls by Kiran Millwood Hargrave (Hachette).
• The Tunnels Below by Nadine Wild-Palmer (Pushkin Children’s)

Adult

• A Book of Secrets by Kate Morrison (Jacaranda).
• Do You Dream of Terra-Two? by Temi Oh (Simon & Schuster).
• Everything You Ever Wanted by Luiza Sauma (Penguin/Viking).
• Golden Child by Claire Adam (Faber & Faber).
• Living The Dream by Isabelle Dupuy (Jacaranda).
• Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams (Trapeze).
• The Confessions of Frannie Langton by Sara Collins (Penguin/Viking).
• This Green and Pleasant Land by Ayisha Malik (Zaffre/Bonnier)

The shortlist will be announced in September before the winner is revealed at a ceremony in London, UK in October.