Rosoff wins 2016 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award

US-born author Meg Rosoff has won the  2016 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, the world’s richest prize for children’s and young adult literature. Rosoff, who is based in the UK, is best known for her YA novels, including How I Live Now and Picture Me Gone (both Penguin). The jury praised Rosoff’s novels for ‘speaking to the emotions as well as the intellect’. ‘In sparkling prose, she writes about the search for meaning and identity in a peculiar and bizarre world,’ the jury’s citation reads. ‘Her brave and humorous stories are one-of-a-kind. She leaves no reader unmoved.’ Rosoff will be presented with the prize, worth five million Swedish krona (approximately A$814,979) on 30 May in Stockholm. As previously reported by Books+Publishing, also nominated for the 2016 award were Australians Ursula Dubosarsky, Libby Gleeson, Morris Gleitzman, Alison Lester, Melina Marchetta and Markus Zusak; and New Zealand author Joy Cowley; and New Zealand author and illustrator Lynley Dodd. In 2015 the award went to South African reading development organisation PRAESA (Project for the Study of Alternative Education in South Africa).

Category: International news Junior