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Lowe wins Costa Book of the Year Award

In the UK, Hannah Lowe has won the £30,000 (A$57,000) Costa Book of the Year for her poetry collection The Kids (Bloodaxe Books).

Lowe, a former London teacher, drew on her experiences teaching at an inner-city school to write the book of sonnets.

Judges said The Kids is ‘a book to fall in love with’. ‘It’s joyous, it’s warm and it’s completely universal,’ said chair of judges Reeta Chakrabarti. ‘It’s crafted and skilful but also accessible.’

‘We were looking for the most enjoyable book, the most accessible book, the book that you would most want to pass on to other people,’ Chakrabarti added. ‘And the winner was, for all of us, fresh and immediate, it spoke very directly to everybody. It has a universality to it—in a simple way, because everybody’s been to school.’

Lowe’s collection beat out three titles to take out the poetry category, and was chosen as the overall winner ahead of the four other category winners: Unsettled Ground (Claire Fuller, Penguin) for novel, Open Water (Azumah Nelson, Viking) for first novel, Fall: The mystery of Robert Maxwell (John Preston, Viking) for biography and The Crossing (Manjeet Mann, Penguin) for YA.

The winner of last year’s Costa Book of the Year was Monique Roffey’s novel The Mermaid of Black Conch: A love story (Peepal Tree Press).

For more information about the prize, see the Costa website.

 

Category: International news