Following the enormous success of last year’s first ever Isle Of Wight Book Awards, this year’s awards have just opened for submissions.
As last year there are three categories, with the awards’ founder Hunter Davies once again judging the non-fiction books, Alan Titchmarsh resuming his role overseeing the children’s books, and this year they are joined by fiction judge Georgina Moore- publicist for some of the biggest names in literature and whose own debut novel ‘The Garnett Girls’ is based on the Island.
This year the awards have tied up with the annual Isle of Wight Literary Festival with the prize-giving lunch being held on 3rd October at the Island Sailing Club marking the the festival’s opening.
Three distinguished local sponsors are generously contributing to the lunch and the prize money: Hovertravel, The Isle of Wight Music Festival, and private benefactors David and Patsy Franks, plus help and support from the Medina Bookshop in Cowes and Monkton Arts in Ryde.
Last year’s competition was a roaring success with over 100 entries consisting of books published over the previous five years, this year books however must have been published during 2022. 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, the island. Anything really, as long as there is an Isle of Wight content.
If you have already had, or about to have, the thrill and pleasure and intense satisfaction of actually producing your very own book on any subject connected with the island, fill in the entry form available on the website, then drop in four copies of your finished masterpiece to one of four drop-off points: Medina bookshop in Cowes, Monkton Arts in Ryde, Mrs Middleton’s Bookshop in Freshwater or Babushka Books in Shanklin. Entry is free.