A Reflection on A Home for Luna : Children’s Winner 2020 The idea for A Home for Luna had been swimming around in my head for some months. The urge to write a story that created empathy for the refugee crisis had become urgent. At that time in 2018, the Syrian war had displaced over 5 million people. The Rohingya genocide in Myanmar was escalating. Many stories of migrants and refugees dying during their flight to freedom were in the news. I was shocked by the risk and peri

Fiction winner 2023 How did you feel when you learned you’d won the Rubery Book Award? At first, I thought my friends were “punking” me. After confirming with my agent, I was humbled, surprised then elated. What does this award mean to you personally — and to your writing career? My entire writing career I have been consumed by doubt and in many ways a feeling of imposter syndrome. I would wonder if I belong to the writing community and whether or not I have anything of valu

Different forms of writing, different genres, and the widest imaginable range of styles and themes. Its eclecticism is a joy for me, partly because it exposes me to writing that I wouldn't normally read. This has been a profoundly enriching experience...

I don’t really keep my eye on awards and prizes. However, they come into view when writers I admire win them, so when Angela Readman’s dazzling short story collection Don’t Try This At Home won in 2015, I became aware of the Rubery, and had a look at what else had won in recent years – all of which turned out to be work that I liked (yes, it prompted me to purchase a few books I hadn’t come across). This prompted me to submit Learning to Have Lost, as I thought my work might