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The Jhalak Prize and the Jhalak Children's & YA Prize seek to support and celebrate books by British and British resident writers of colour. The prize was founded by writers Sunny Singh and Nikesh Shukla. 

Jhalak Prize

The Jhalak Prize and Jhalak Children's & YA Prize 2023

The winners of this year's prizes were announced on 25th May at the British Library. Travis Alabanza is the winner of the Jhalak Prize for None of the Above, and Daniella Jawando is the winner of the Jhalak Children's & YA Prize for When Our Worlds Collided. Each winner has been awarded £1,000 and a specially curated work of art as part of the ongoing Jhalak Art Residency. This year's artists are Sharon Adebisi and Diane Ewen. Find out more below.   

"I am immensely grateful to the Jhalak Prize judges who brought passion, rigour and immense expertise to this year's judging and sifted through submissions of the highest quality. After much deliberation and heartache, they have enthusiastically and unanimously picked two books that are timely and timeless, courageous as well as meticulously crafted. None of the Above by Travis Alabanza is a thoughtful, stunningly crafted meditation on identity, survival, resilience and defiance that inhabits the personal but also transcends it to speak to universal ethical, moral and human concerns. Danielle Jawando's When Our Worlds Collided is a compelling young adult novel that is urgent, necessary and intensely compassionate. These are books to be read, read again, cherished. These are also books that demand to be pushed into every readers' hands."

Sunny Singh, Prize director

Discover these amazing winners for yourself by visiting your local bookshop.

Explore the full shortlists and find out more about the judges below, plus follow #JhalakPrize23 and @jhalakprize on social media for updates.

The Jhalak Prize winner 2023

The Jhalak Children's & YA winner 2023

The Jhalak Prize shortlist 2023

The Jhalak Children's & YA shortlist 2023

The Judges

Monisha Rajesh's 5 books to transport you

Irfan Master's top tips when writing for children

 

Previous winners

Previous winners of the Jhalak Prize are Sabba Khan for The Roles We Play (2022), Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi for The First Woman (Oneworld) in 2021, Johny Pitts for Afropean: Notes from Black Europe (Penguin) in 2020, Guy Gunaratne for In Our Mad and Furious City (Tinder Press) in 2019, Reni Eddo-Lodge for Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race (Bloomsbury Circus) in 2018 and Jacob Ross for The Bone Readers (Little, Brown) in 2017. The inaugural Jhalak Childrens & Young Adult Prize was won by Patrice Lawrence for Eight Pieces of Silva (Hachette Children's) in 2021, and Maisie Chan was the 2022 winner for Danny Chung Does Not Do Maths.

Visit www.jhalakprize.com to learn more.

Our partnership with Jhalak Prize

At National Book Tokens, we're thrilled to be partnering with the Jhalak Prize for the third year in a row to help them increase awareness of the prize titles amongst booksellers, who have always been the best champions of books in their local communities. By distributing point of sale kits and social media assets to more than 100 bookshops, and amplifying their activities through tailored PR support, we help them to create instore displays and shout about the longlists, shortlists and winners from their online channels and in local press.

"Championing the Jhalak prize has always been so important for us. It has been an honour to have sponsored two winners, one being a Newham author. Such an important prize."
- Vivian Archer, Newham Bookshop

 

The Jhalak Prize Winner 2023

 

Jhalak Prize 2023 winner

 

Winner, Jhalak Prize 2023

Travis Alabanza, None of the Above

Travis Alabanza has won the Jhalak Prize for None of the Above - their ‘beautiful book of intense vulnerability, generosity and humour.’  In None of the Above, Alabanza examines seven phrases people have directed at them about their gender identity. Through these seven phrases, which include some of their most transformative experiences as a Black, mixed race, non-binary person, Alabanza turns a mirror back on society, giving us reason to question the very framework in which we live and the ways we treat each other. None of the Above was praised by the judges for ‘presenting us with a voice that's rarely heard, often stifled and desperately important.’

"Travis Alabanza's book has a reflective quality that touches the heart and engages the mind. It feels like being invited into someone's interiority." - Anthony Vahni Capildeo

"None of the Above is a vulnerable and urgent exploration of non-binary identities. I read it from cover to cover in one sitting, and I know that I'll return to it again."Haleh Agar

"Alabanza writes with extraordinary generosity, vulnerability and thoughtfulness, presenting us with a voice that's rarely heard, often stifled and desperately important." - Monisha Rajesh

 

Jhalak Prize 2023 winner with trophy

Artist Sharon Adebisi has created the trophy for Travis Alabanza's None of the AboveSharon’s signature style of using a monochrome black background in her work was developed during a period in which she experienced a loss of identity in everything but her race. Her work for the Jhalak Prize is titled ‘Blessing’ and has been created with acrylic on a circular canvas. The strong colours reinforce the key themes of healing and hope for the future.

Find out more about the Jhalak Art Residency and the 2023 artists.

 

The Jhalak Children's & YA Prize Winner 2023

 

Jhalak Children's & YA Prize 2023 winner

 

 

Winner, Jhalak Children's &Young Adult Prize 2023

Danielle Jawando, When Our Worlds Collided

Danielle Jawando’s powerful coming of age story When Our Worlds Collided has won the Jhalak Children’s and Young Adult Prize.  Praised as a ‘powerful and devastating story’, Jawando’s novel is about chance encounters, injustice and how the choices that we make can completely change our future.  When Our Worlds Collided was praised by the judges for being a book ‘that speaks to many young people today that have been vilified or who go unheard.’

"When Our World's Collided stands out for its craft, courage and connection. This is a book with a devastating impact and one that brings to light a part of Britain rarely seen in literature."Irfan Master

"I loved Danielle Jawando's When Our Worlds Collided. If there's one book every teenager should read this year, it's this one."Yaba Badoe

"Danielle Jawando is a writer whose craft is elevated and empathetic. Her book is one that speaks to many young people today that have been vilified or who go unheard." - Maisie Chan

Jhalak Children's & YA Prize 2023 winner with trophy

Artist Diane Ewen created the trophy for the Jhalak Children’s & Young Adult Prize. Diane likes to create illustrations that are hand-drawn in pencil before painting in watercolour and acrylics prior to embellishing them using Photoshop but she also enjoys working directly on the computer screen creating her designs. For the Jhalak Children’s & Young Adult Prize trophy, she drew on memories of carnivals, especially that of Notting Hill, as well as her own heritage from the Caribbean. Created digitally, the work looks forward to a joyful future replete with creativity, dreams and hope..

Find out more about the Jhalak Art Residency and the 2023 artists.

The Jhalak Prize shortlist

 

 

Jhalak Prize Shortlist

None of the Above

by Travis Alabanza (Canongate)

Takeaway

by Angela Hui (Trapeze)

The Secret Diaries of Charles Ignatius Sancho

by Paterson Joseph (Dialogue)

When We Were Birds

by Ayanna Lloyd Banwo (Hamish Hamilton)

I'm a Fan

by Sheena Patel (Rough Trade Books)

Hiding to Nothing

by Anita Pati (Liverpool University Press)

 

 

The Jhalak Children's & YA Prize shortlist

 


Jhalak Children's & YA Prize Shortlist
In Our Hands

by Lucy Farfort (Tate)

When Our Worlds Collided

by Danielle Jawando (Simon & Schuster)

Mia And The Lightcasters

by Janelle McCurdy, ill. Ana Latese (Faber)

Ellie Pillai Is Brown

by Christine Pillainayagam (Faber)

Rebel Skies

by Ann Sei Lin (Walker)

Dadaji’s Paintbrush

by Rashmi Sirdeshpande, ill. Ruchi Mhasane (Andersen)

 

 

The Jhalak Prize Longlist 2023

 

Featuring fiction, non-fiction and poetry, this year's Jhalak Prize longlist comprises twelve thrilling titles, including both new and established writers.

The Jhalak Prize longlist 2023

None of the Above

by Travis Alabanza (Canongate)

Birdgirl

by Mya-Rose Craig (Jonathan Cape)

Takeaway

by Angela Hui (Trapeze)

The Attic Child

by Lola Jaye (Pan Books)

The Secret Diaries of Charles Ignatius Sancho

by Paterson Joseph (Dialogue)

When We Were Birds

by Ayanna Lloyd Banwo (Hamish Hamilton)

Here Again Now

by Okechukwu Nzelu (Dialogue)

Losing the Plot

by Derek Owusu (Canongate)

The Room Between Us

by Denise Saul (Liverpool University Press)

I’m a Fan

by Sheena Patel (Rough Trade Books)

Hiding to Nothing

by Anita Pati (Liverpool University Press)

Another Way to Split Water

by Alycia Pirmohamed (Polygon Books)

 

"The books that I always wish people would write are being written -- and published. As parcel after parcel of Jhalak Prize books arrived at my home in Scotland, I was almost jumping with excitement…what a blaze of good thinking. In the longlist, there's a startling ability to balance reflection in solitude with the messiness of life; authentic, bloody, loving. These aren't minoritized writers made to fixate on 'identity'. These are writers of and from the world, most intimately, most widely."

Judge and 2022 Jhalak Prize shortlistee, Anthony Vahni Capildeo

 

The Jhalak Children's & YA Prize Longlist 2023

 

The Jhalak Children's & YA Prize longlist

The Jhalak Children’s & Young Adult Prize twelve-book longlist includes picture books, early readers, chapter books and young adult fiction. 

John Agard’s Windrush Child

by John Agard, ill. Sophie Bass (Walker Books)

Creeping Beauty

by Joseph Coelho, ill. Freya Hartas (Walker Books)

In Our Hands

by Lucy Farfort (Tate)

These Are The Words

by Nikita Gill (Macmillan Children’s)

When Our Worlds Collided

by Danielle Jawando (Simon & Schuster)

Needle

by Patrice Lawrence (Barrington Stoke)

Mia And The Lightcasters

by Janelle McCurdy, ill. Ana Latese (Faber)

Onyeka And The Academy Of The Sun

by Tolá Okogwu (Simon & Schuster)

Ellie Pillai Is Brown

by Christine Pillainayagam (Faber)

The Haunting of Tyrese Walker

by J.P. Rose (Andersen)

Rebel Skies

by Ann Sei Lin (Walker)

Dadaji’s Paintbrush

by Rashmi Sirdeshpande, ill. Ruchi Mhasane (Andersen)

 

"For me, the Jhalak longlist represents the very best of writing coming out of the U.K. by writers of colour. I was taken to far off fantastical places, I learnt new things, I laughed and cried. The craft that went into all of these books was astounding."

Judge and 2023 Jhalak Children's & YA Prize winner, Maisie Chan

 

Monisha Rajesh's 5 books to transport you

 

Monisha Rajesh

Monisha Rajesh, author of Around India in 80 Trains, Around the World in 80 Trains and Epic Train Journeys, is one of the judges for this year's Jhalak Prize. Here, she recommends five books which will transport you across the world without ever needing to leave your armchair.

Read more about Monisha and the rest of this year's judges.

 

1) The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

As the first Indian woman to win the Booker Prize, Roy defied all the rules of language with brazen confidence and enviable ease. Set in Kerala, this book was the one that made me want to write.

 

2) A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway

Hemingway’s memoir of his time in Paris with his wife offers a fresh and simple approach to travel writing, one that strikes pangs of literary envy. It doubles up as a guidebook, in which you can hear the din of bars and clamour of cafes, and taste the oysters and cold Sancerre that the couple splurge on together.

 

3) Yoga For People Who Can’t Be Bothered to Do It by Geoff Dyer

Dyer subverts all the rules of travel and travel writing in this hilarious series of snippets mocking our obsession with sunsets, capturing moments on camera, and buying souvenirs. Utterly brilliant.

 

4) The Buddha of Suburbia by Hanif Kureishi

Not a travel book, but The Buddha of Suburbia certainly transports its readers into the restless mind of Karim Amir, desperate to escape suburban South London. It has the perfect opening line: “My name is Karim Amir, and I am an Englishman born and bred, almost.” I never felt this way when I was growing up, always assured of my identity. But no sentence better sums up the internal conflict of what it now feels like as a child of immigrant parents in post-Brexit Britain.

 

5) Narcopolis by Jeet Thayil

Built from brutality and grouted together with beauty, Narcopolis is an homage to Bombay, a city of harmony and acceptance. Here, the city is the hero of the story, a sanctuary for all creeds and castes that eventually morphs into an epitaph of a city which “obliterated its own history by changing its name and surgically altering its face”. 

 

About this year's Jhalak Prize and Jhalak Children's & YA Prize

 

 

Irfan Master's top tips when writing for children

 

Irfan MasterDo you dream of penning the next big kids' book? Love reading to your children and think you could write something they and other young bookworms would love? We're thrilled to welcome Irfan Master, award-winning author and judge of this year's Jhalak Children's & YA Prize, to give us his top tips on writing for children, so whether you're already halfway through your masterpiece or have yet to start the first page, there'll be something here to inspire and guide your work.

Irfan Master's debut novel, A Beautiful Lie,  was shortlisted for the Waterstones Children's book prize and the Branford Boase award for debut authors and translated into 10 languages. His second novel for young adults, Out of Heart was longlisted for the Carnegie Medal and UKLA award. Irfan's short fiction has also been published in numerous anthologies, most recently in The Cuckoo Cage (2022), Resist (Comma press, 2019), The Good Journal (2019) and the award winning, A Change is Gonna Come (Stripes, 2017). In 2019 he contributed an article highlighting the importance of greater representation in literature for young people that featured in Breaking New Ground, a round-up of British writers of colour produced by BookTrust and Speaking Volumes. 

Read more about Irfan and this year's other judges.

 

ASK LOTS OF QUESTIONS 

Where do ideas come from? Usually, an idea forms as a question. For example, what if a group of boys crash land on a deserted island? How would they survive? Could they organise themselves? What happens next? Questions give you a quick way in. You might not be able to answer all the questions you pose, but you'll find that the questions worth asking will demand answers, and just like that, you'll have a what or a why and a when and a where.

READ ALOUD

All language has a rhythm, and children and young adults often have their own vocabulary and patterns of speech. This could be repeating phrases, or slang or specific speech from a region or country. Often, reading on a page will seem fine, but once the words are read aloud, you'll find where the pauses are, or if a sentence is a little too long, or if a word feels clunky. This is particularly true when writting dialogue where you can hear if the dialouge feels like something a child might say. Reading aloud will make your writing feel more natural and authentic. 

WRITING FOR CHILDREN DOESN'T NEED TO BE SIMPLE

Writing for children/YA doesn't mean simple writing. Children are pretty resilient and instinctively know more about the world than adults give them credit for. Children and young adults are able to to pick up meaning through context. They can read a ghost story that is about grief and still enjoy the setting, characters and action. A good story can be about many things at the same time, as well as being a great read.

DON'T WRITE FOR THE MARKET

But don't entirely ignore it either. When I pitched my first novel, A Beautiful Lie, a story set in India about a boy and his father on the cusp of Partition in 1947, it was hardly a trending topic (it still isn't but I feel it should be!), but it was important to me to write it. The key was writing a familiar story with universal themes, in this case, a boy telling a lie to protect his father that leads to another lie and so on. Trends come and go, but stories written with deep feeling will always find a reader. 

READ CHILDREN'S BOOKS

It seems simple doesn't it? Good writing advice usually is. There is no better source for writing tips than a well crafted book. Reading lots of books will give you a feel for different types of stories, characters and settings. Often all this "learning" will not be obvious. In fact, a lot of it will lie dormant for months, sometimes years, but once you start writing in earnest, you will find you know what makes a good protagonist or an anti-hero or you can instinctively feel how a plot might unfold or how to bring all the strand together in a memorable ending. Read your favourite author's books. Read outside of your comfort zone. Read lots of them. Read, read, read! 

 

About this year's Jhalak Prize and Jhalak Children's & YA Prize

The Judges

 

 

The Jhalak Prize

Haleh Agar, Anthony Vahni Capildeo and Monisha Rajesh

 

Haleh Agar

Haleh Agar is a novelist and short story writer based in London. Her contemporary debut novel Out of Touch was published in April 2020. Haleh's short story 'Not Contagious' was Highly Commended by the 2019 Costa Short Story Award, her flash fiction won the Brighton Prize, and her narrative essay 'On Writing Ethnic Stories' won The London Magazine's inaugural essay competition. She was part of the 2021 judging panel for The London Magazine's short story prize, and is judging Aesthetica magazine's short story competition this year.

 

Anthony Vahni Capildeo

Anthony Vahni Capildeo FRSL is a Trinidadian Scottish writer of poetry and non-fiction. Capildeo's numerous publications include The Dusty Angel (Oystercatcher, 2021) and A Happiness (Intergraphia, 2022). Their interests include plurilingualism, silence, traditional masquerade, and multidisciplinary collaboration. They are Writer in Residence and Professor at the University of York,  and an Honorary Student of Christ Church, Oxford.Capildeo's work has been recognized by awards including the Forward Poetry Best Collection Prize, a T.S. Eliot Prize nomination, a Cholmondeley Award (Society of Authors), and OCM Bocas Poetry Prize shortlisting. They were shortlisted for the Jhalak Prize in 2022 for their psychogeographic eco-poetry collection, Like a Tree Walking, completed while a Visiting Scholar at Pembroke College, Cambridge.

 

Monisha Rajesh

Monisha Rajesh is an author and journalist whose writing has appeared in Time magazine, Vanity Fair, The New York Times, The Guardian, The Sunday Times and Conde Nast Traveller. Her first book Around India in 80 Trains (2012) was named one of The Independent’s top ten books on India. Her second book, Around the World in 80 Trains (2019) won the National Geographic Travel Book of the year and was shortlisted for the Stanford Dolman Award. Her third book Epic Train Journeys is currently longlisted for the National Geographic Travel Book of the Year.

 

Jhalak Children’s & YA Prize

Yaba Badoe, Maisie Chan and Irfan Master

 

Yaba Badoe

Yaba Badoe is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and writer. A graduate of King's College Cambridge, she was a civil servant in Ghana before becoming a general trainee with the BBC. She has taught in Spain and Jamaica and worked as a Visiting Scholar at the Institute of African Studies at University of Ghana. Her short stories have been published in Critical Quarterly, African Love Stories and Daughters of Africa. Her first novel for adults, True Murder, was published by Jonathan Cape in 2009. Her first children’s novel, A Jigsaw of Fire and Stars (pb Zephyr), was shortlisted for the Branford Boase Award in 2018 and nominated for the CILIP Carnegie Award. Her latest YA novel, Lionheart Girl, was shortlisted for the Edward Stanford Children’s Travel Book of the Year 2022 and longlisted for Jhalak Children’s and YA Prize 2022. Yaba lives in London.

 

Maisie Chan

Maisie Chan is a children's author whose debut novel Danny Chung Does Not Do Maths (Piccadilly Press) won the Jhalak Children's and YA Prize and the Branford Boase Award in 2022. The book was also shortlisted for the Blue Peter Book Awards 2022. It has also been longlisted for the Diversity Book Awards, the Tower Hamlet Book Awards, the Spark Book Awards, the Redbridge Award and the Big Book Award. It was also a Guardian Books of the Month pick in 2021. Her latest novel Keep Dancing, Lizzie Chu is out now with Piccadilly Press. She also writes the series Tiger Warrior under the name M. Chan. She has written early readers for Hachette and Big Cat Collins, and has a collection of myths and legends out with Scholastic. 

 

Irfan Master

Irfan Master is an award-winning author of novels, shorts stories, poetry and plays. His debut novel, A Beautiful Lie, (Bloomsbury, 2011) was shortlisted for the Waterstones Children's book prize and the Branford Boase award for debut authors and translated into 10 languages. His second novel for young adults, Out of Heart (Hot Key, 2017) was longlisted for the Carnegie Medal and UKLA award. Irfan's short fiction has also been published in numerous anthologies, most recently in The Cuckoo Cage (2022), Resist (Comma press, 2019), The Good Journal (2019) and the award winning, A Change is Gonna Come (Stripes, 2017). In 2019 he contributed an article highlighting the importance of greater representation in literature for young people that featured in Breaking New Ground, a round-up of British writers of colour produced by BookTrust and Speaking Volumes. 

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