HGE announces 2016 Ampersand Prize shortlist

Hardie Grant Egmont has announced the shortlist for its 2016 Ampersand Prize for unpublished YA and middle-grade authors.

The five shortlisted authors and their works are:

• Rhiannon Williams for the middle-grade novel ‘Little Ott Colter’, about a young girl who ‘must disguise herself as a boy and join an organisation of monster hunters working to keep her homeland safe’ and rescue her lost brother.
• Amelia Mellor for the YA novel ‘Anomalies’, about a ‘brilliant young engineer and a feral orphan’ who are ‘thrown together by chance when their families are abducted by mechanical monsters’.
• Amy Laura Jackson for the YA novel ‘Grow’, in which ‘a teenager breaks into his childhood home searching for a connection to his absent dad’ and finds a father figure in the new owner and a love interest in the owner’s niece.
• Rachel Sanderson for the YA novel ‘The Space Between’, in which ‘a teenage girl vanishes without a trace’ while ‘her best friend finds herself falling apart—and [falling] in love with the missing girl’s brother’.
• Jess Howard for the YA novel ‘Dead Chatter’, in which ‘a deadly disease breaks out that turns people into flesh eating shamblers, [and] a teenage girl is separated from her family and joins forces with a group of unconventional survivors’.

The shortlist was chosen from 160 entries. The winner of the prize, who receives a publishing contract with Hardie Grant Egmont, will be announced in January.

For more information about the prize, click here.

Category: Junior Local news