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NEON ROSES by Rachel Dawson has been shortlisted for the 2024 Polari Frist Book Prize. The Polari Prize is the UK and Ireland’s only dedicated LGBTQ+ book prize, founded by author and activist, Paul Burston. The Polari First Book Prize was launched in 2011. Previous winners include Fiona Mozley, Saleem Haddad, Paul McVeigh, Kirsty Logan, Diriye Osman, John McCullough, Mari Hannah, James Maker, Angela Chadwick, Amrou Al-Kadhi, Mohsin Zaidi, Adam Zmith and Jon Ransom. The Polari Prize was founded in 2019 and awarded to Andrew McMillan in its inaugural year, to Kate Davies in 2020, Diana Souhami in 2021, Joelle Taylor in 2022 and Julia Armfield in 2023. The Children’s & YA Book Prize was established in 2022 and won by Terry Eagleton and James Mayhew. The awards have been covered in a wide range of publications including Metro, the Bookseller, Book Brunch, the Guardian, the i, Irish Independent, Press Association, Gay Times, Winq, BBC Radio 4, The London Magazine, Wasafiri and elsewhere. This year's judges for the Polari First Book Prize are author Rachel Holmes, author and writing coach Karen McLeod, author Jon Ransom (Polari Prize winner 2023), Co-chair of Spread The Word Simon Richardson and author Paul Burston (chair). Jon Ransom said: “This is an exciting and diverse longlist, representing the very best of LGBTQ+ writing today.”

THE WOMAN ON THE LEDGE by Ruth Mancini has been chosen as one of six titles on the Richard & Judy Book Club. The six books in this brand new WHSmith Book Club selection include compulsive thrillers and twisty mysteries selected by Richard & Judy themselves.

Ella Frears's debut novel GOODLORD: AN EMAIL has been shortlisted for The Forward Prize for Petry 2024. The Forward Prizes for Poetry are the most influential awards for new poetry in the UK and Ireland, honouring fresh voices alongside internationally established names. First awarded in 1992, over the last three decades the prizes have celebrated some of the most recognised names in poetry including Simon Armitage, Thom Gunn, Seamus Heaney, Ted Hughes, Carol Ann Duffy, Claudia Rankine, Jackie Kay and Caleb Femi.

On Thursday 13th June 2024, Roy Foster, Chair of Judges, announced that MONET: THE RESTLESS VISION, published by Allen Lane, had won the ELHB 2024 Prize. Flora Fraser, Chair of the Prize, presented winning author Jackie Wullschläger with a cheque for £5,000 and a bound copy of Elizabeth Longford’s memoir, The Pebbled Shore. The Judges are all well-known historical biographers and historians. Antonia and Flora Fraser are also, respectively, daughter and granddaughter of Elizabeth Longford, the distinguished historical biographer and author of Victoria: RI, of Wellington: Years of the Sword and of Wellington: Pillar of State, who died at the age of 96 in 2002. Roy Foster on Jackie Wullschläger’s winning biography, Monet: The Restless Vision (Allen Lane):"The Judges cast a wide net for the 2024 Prize, choosing books which profiled various kinds of transformative lives: people who crossed barriers to change history, often in ways no less decisive for being discreet, whether they were philosophers, codebreakers, politicians or diplomats. In the end we chose a masterly biography of an artist who transformed the way we see things. Jackie Wullschläger’s life of Claude Monet is not only an enthralling portrait of a powerful personality; she shows how the ‘restlessness’ pinpointed in her subtitle drove Monet to reformulate memory and time in his great serial paintings. The process culminated with the legendary water-lilies series, but Wullschläger’s deeply-researched book traces the development of his vision back to its origins. She surveys and illuminates a complex and passionate personal life, and the networks of friendship and affinity which connected him to the worlds of Clemenceau, Bergson and Proust, as well as the fellowship of other Impressionists. Her biography not only shows the development of a revolutionary artistic vision and the slow process of understanding it; she sets the process against a brilliant evocation of the rich and multi-layered world of French culture in the late nineteenth century and belle époque. Historically insightful, psychologically perceptive, and consummately readable, Monet: The Restless Vision fulfilled everything the Judges of the Elizabeth Longford Prize look for in ground-breaking historical biography." Founded in 2003 by Flora Fraser and Peter Soros (Patron) to commemorate her late grandmother’s writing career, the Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography rewards annually a historical biography which combines scholarship and narrative drive. Previous winners include Anne Somerset’s Queen Anne, John Bew’s Citizen Clem: A Biography of Attlee, Giles Tremlett’s Isabella of Castile: Europe’s First Great Queen and Ramachandra Guha’s Rebels Against the Raj: Western Fighters for India’s Freedom.

NEON ROSES by Rachel Dawson has been shortlisted for The Society of Authors Betty Trask Prize. This award is presented for a first novel by a writer under 35. Judge Anjali Joseph said: "The shortlist this year includes several historical novels, and a few that take elements of classics – Moby Dick, Frankenstein – and make them into something new. All of the shortlisted novels delighted us with their freshness and each had a voice that was distinctively and recognisably its own." Judged by Anjali Joseph, Michael Donkor and Alex Preston.