Ireland is taking centre stage this week. I'm preparing for my travels there later this week (see below), but before that, tomorrow, on Monday 24th Nov, I'll be taking part in the Book of the Year 2025 online event with Halfway up the Stairs, an award-winning children's bookshop in Greystones, Co. Wicklow, one of the only children's bookshops in Ireland. I'm looking forward to meeting the team, thanking them for supporting and loving…

I'm honoured and delighted to have been shortlisted for Teen and Young Adult Book of the Year in the A Post Irish Book Awards. The shortlist was announced on 22 October, and the award ceremony is on 27th November, so I'll be off to Dublin for the glitz and glamour of a night with some of the brightest and best of Ireland's writers.

2025 Shortlists Announced Scroll through all of this year’s shortlists below. EASON NOVEL OF THE YEAR Sponsored By The Book Centre CRIME FICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR In association with The Irish Independ...

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Jodie Jones is out in the big bad world, and she is getting lots and lots of love. The launch was jubilant thanks to the amazing Rev and team at Waterstones King Road, the DFB team, and everyone who came along to celebrate. Anthony, my editor, gave the world's best and most complimentary speech. My oldest and bossiest friend came and spoke to everyone there, I think: I've known her since I was six (we walked to primary school and secondary school together every day, were besties at sixth form college, had kids around the same time, and have stayed in contact ever since).

My Name is Jodie Jones yet what else is our narrator? A word collector? An observer? A survivor of an event that, and mother who, should not be hidden?

Uncorrected proof cover, publisher David Fickling Books, 11 September 2025, ISBN: 978-1788453516 My Name is Jodie Jones is the most exceptional first hand narrative that I have read this year. The …

I'm delighted and excited. My Name is Jodie Jones will be published this Thursday 11th September, and the pre-publication reviews are astonishing. I have been bowled over by the positive energy and love for this book. Thank you to all the reviewers for taking the time to read and review it. Sarah Webb on Instagram wrote the one that made me squeal: …

Sometimes I find writing easy: I just open my head and words come out. I'm happiest if they come out exactly as my brain intends. With My Name is Jodie Jones, I was stunned when someone (that someone being my agent, Jessica Hare) actually liked the words my brain intended, and didn't think they were all weird and nuts. Then other people liked what I'd written (those people being the team at DFB) and that was even more surprising.

Uncorrected proof cover, publisher David Fickling Books, September 2025, ISBN: 978-1788453516 My Name is Jodie Jones is the most exceptional first hand narrative that I have read this year. The mai…

My heart is going boom booty boom booty boom with love, delight, excitement and titillation to share the cover of 'My Name is Jodie Jones', published this September with David Fickling Books. It's a beaut: full of zip, zing, zeal and pizazz. Big up Michelle Brackenborough for this stunner: you rock. I love so many of your covers. Thank you. …

Join critically-acclaimed authors Ashley Hickson-Lovence and Emma Shevah as they share the themes and flavours that infuse their work, and guide you – with the help of the work of other diverse author...

Book for Children Competition A good story will always captivate a youngster’s imagination, so if you have an entertaining tale to tell then enter our Book for Children Competition. The...

I lost my writing mojo a few years back. It happens. I think it might happen more to those of us who have full time jobs, kids, homes to run, and barely time to brush our teeth, so writing and editing books seems an unnecessary add on. Writing them is fine. Fun. Hard. Hours of laptopery and screenery. But fine. Not quite so fine are the seemingly endless days, weekends, half terms, holidays, evenings and sunny beach days spent editing and rewriting - that is a massive pain.