As part of NaNoWriMo 2015 and prior to the January launch of our 2016 Diversity Writing for Children Prize, in collaboration with Puffin Books and Catherine Pelligrino, we will be hosting a selection of workshops to support writers to plan and begin writing a Young Adult or children’s novel. We will also be providing a number of e-resources throughout the month to support writers to plan their narratives and start their stories.

Our first workshop will take place on Thursday 12th November. This will give writers an opportunity to come up with some ideas beforehand and begin their novels. We will have a further workshop on Tuesday 24th November in which writers will be able to share work they have created, ask questions, consider next steps and receive further details of the forthcoming prize. Writers will leave this workshop with constructive feedback to develop their work further, signposted to resources that may be helpful to them specifically and a path to take with their piece. Details of our workshops can be found here.

Writers will have the opportunity to develop and refine their work in the coming months and will be encouraged to submit their work for the prize. Submissions will be accepted for the prize from January 11th 2016 and the launch event will take place during January (details tba).

For E-resources, click here.

About Diversity Writing For Children Prize

Martin Luther King had a dream that one day his children would “not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character”. We have a dream that one day diverse writers will be judged by the content of their characters and not by the colour of their skin or the nature of their background.

Right now, there are too few diverse authors featured on UK children’s bookshelves. There are too few diverse characters between the pages of children’s books.

This widely acknowledged lack of diversity in the UK children’s fiction market has persisted for too long. The Commonword Diversity Writing for Children Prize seeks to change things. We want to play our part in creating an environment where more diverse stories are available in the UK for today’s children and young adults.