Costa Book Awards 2014 Category Winners Announced

London, 19.30pm 5th January 2015: Costa Coffee today announces the Costa Book Awards 2014 winners in the Novel, First Novel, Biography, Poetry and Children’s Book categories.

The Costa Book Awards is the only major UK book prize that is open solely to authors resident in the UK and Ireland and also, uniquely, recognises the most enjoyable books across five categories – First Novel, Novel, Biography, Poetry and Children’s Book - published in the last year.

Originally established in 1971 by Whitbread Plc, Costa announced its takeover of the sponsorship of the UK's most prestigious book prize in 2006. 2014 marks the 43rd year of the Book Awards.

The five winning authors who will now compete for the 2014 Costa Book of the Year are:

Ali Smith, who triumphs in the Costa Novel Award category for the second time for her sixth novel, How to be both. She first won the Novel Award in 2005 for The Accidental

29-year-old debut writer Emma Healey, who collects the Costa First Novel Award for Elizabeth is Missing – a story narrated by Maud, an octogenarian whose progressive dementia is complicating her ability to solve a mystery from the past

Helen Macdonald, who takes the Costa Biography Award for H is for Hawk. Part memoir, part nature book, it is her personal account of training a goshawk as a way of dealing with grief following her father’s death

Welsh poet, teacher Jonathan Edwards, who scoops the Costa Poetry Award for his ‘joyous and brilliant’debut collection My Family and Other Superheroes

Author and journalist Kate Saunders, who wins the Costa Children’s Book Award for Five Children on the Western Front. Called ‘a modern masterpiece’ by the judges, it’s a moving sequel to E Nesbit’s Five Children and It, and transplants the main characters into the trenches of World War I.

“What a fantastic collection of books,” said Christopher Rogers, Managing Director of Costa. “The Costa Book Awards are all about recognising great writing and a good read and this year’s winners are, as always, superb examples of this.”

The five Costa Book Award winners, each of whom will receive £5,000, were selected from 640 entries, and the books are now eligible for the ultimate prize - the 2014 Costa Book of the Year.

The winner, selected by a panel of judges chaired by Robert Harris, and comprising authors and category judges Maggie O’Farrell, Bernardine Evaristo, Jonathan Stroud, Owen Sheers and Wendy Moore, joined by Dame Diana Rigg, Robert Peston and Samantha Bond, will be announced at an awards ceremony hosted by presenter and broadcaster Penny Smith at Quaglino’s in central London on Tuesday 27th January 2015.

Since the introduction of the Book of the Year award in 1985, it has been won eleven times by a novel, five times by a first novel, five times by a biography, seven times by a collection of poetry and once by a children’s book. The 2013 Costa Book of the Year was The Shock of the Fall by debut novelist Nathan Filer.

The winner of the Costa Short Story Award – voted for by the general public and now in its third year - will also be announced at the awards ceremony. Voting is open until Friday 16^th January until which time the identity of the authors remains anonymous.

For additional information go to www.costa.co.uk/costa-book-awards

Full details of the Category Award Winners follow.

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For further press information, images or to arrange an interview with any of the winning authors, please contact:

Amanda Johnson

Costa Book Awards Press and Publicity

Telephone: 07715 922180 (mobile)

Email: amanda@amandajohnsonpr.com

2014 Costa Book Award Winners

How to be both by Ali SmithHamish Hamilton

About the book:

How to be both is a novel all about art's versatility. Borrowing from painting's fresco technique to make an original literary double-take, it's a fast-moving genre-bending conversation between forms, times, truths and fictions. There's a renaissance artist of the 1460s. There's the child of a child of the 1960s. Two tales of love and injustice twist into a singular yarn where time gets timeless, structural gets playful, knowing gets mysterious, fictional gets real - and all life's givens get given a second chance.

About the author:

Ali Smith was born in Inverness in August 1962 and lives in Cambridge. She won the Saltire First Book Award and a Scottish Arts Council Award in 1995 for her first collection of stories, Free Love and has since published three further collections including Other Stories and Other Stories and The First Person and Other Stories.

She is the author of several novels including Hotel World, which was shortlisted for the Booker and the Orange Prize, and The Accidental which won the Whitbread Novel Award. Her non-fiction includes Artful, which won the 2013 Bristol Festival of Ideas/Best Book of Ideas.

How to be both was shortlisted for the 2014 Man Booker Prize and won the 2014 Goldsmiths Prize. In 2007 she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and was made a CBE for Services to Literature in the 2014 New Year’s Honours List.

What the judges said:

“Deploying her conceit of different beginnings and endings with consummate ease and daring, Ali Smith has pulled off a truly dazzling and inventive story.”

Judges

Elizabeth Buchan Author

Bernardine Evaristo Writer

Jasper Sutcliffe Head of Buying, Foyles

Shortlist, selected from a total of 182 entries:

Elizabeth is Missingby Emma HealeyViking

About the book:

Maud is forgetful. She makes a cup of tea and doesn’t remember to drink it. She goes to the shops and forgets why she went. Back home she finds the place horribly unrecognizable – just like she sometimes thinks her daughter Helen is a total stranger. But there’s one thing Maud is sure of: her friend Elizabeth is missing. The note in her pocket tells her so. And no matter who tells her to stop going on about it, to leave it alone, to shut up, Maud will get to the bottom of it. Because somewhere in Maud’s damaged mind lies the answer to an unsolved seventy-year-old mystery. One everyone has forgotten about. Everyone, except Maud . . .

About the author:

Emma Healeywrote her first short story when she was four, told her teachers she was going to be a writer when she was eight, but had learnt better by twelve and had decided on being a litigator (inspired entirely by the film Clueless). It took another ten years before she came back to writing.

She grew up in London where she went to art college and completed her first degree in bookbinding. She then worked for two libraries, two bookshops, two art galleries and two universities, and was busily pursuing a career in the art world before writing overtook everything. She moved to Norwich in 2010 to study for the MA in Creative Writing at UEA and never moved back again.

What the judges said:

“This outstanding debut novel grabbed us from the very first page – once you start reading you won’t be able to stop. Not only is it gripping, but it shows incredible flair and unusual skill. A very special book.”

Judges:

Joanne Finney Books Editor, Good Housekeeping

Joe Haddow Producer, Radio 2 Book Club

Maggie O’Farrell Writer

Shortlist, selected from a total of 125 entries:

H is for Hawkby Helen MacdonaldJonathan Cape

About the book:

From the age of seven, Helen Macdonald was determined to become a falconer. She learned the arcane terminology and read all the classic books, including TH White’s tortured masterpiece, The Goshawk, which describes White’s struggle to train a hawk as a spiritual contest. When her father dies and she is knocked sideways by grief, she becomes obsessed with the idea of training her own goshawk. She buys Mabel for £800 on a Scottish quayside and takes her home to Cambridge. Then she fills the freezer with hawk food and unplugs the phone, ready to embark on the long, strange business of trying to train this wildest of animals.

About the author:

Helen Macdonald is a writer, poet, illustrator, historian and affiliate at the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge. Her books include Falcon (2006) and Shaler’s Fish (2001). H is for Hawk won the 2014 Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction.

What the judges said:

“A unique and beautiful book with a searing emotional honesty, and descriptive language that is unparalleled in modern literature.”

Judges:

Paul Laity Non-Fiction Books Editor, The Guardian

Wendy Moore Author and Freelance Journalist

Sheila O’Reilly Owner, Dulwich Books

Shortlist, selected from a total of 111 entries:

My Family and Other Superheroes by Jonathan EdwardsSeren

About the book:

Edwards’superheroes are a motley crew. Evel Knievel, Sophia Loren, Ian Rush, Marty McFly, a bicycling nun and a recalcitrant hippo all leap from these pages and jostle for position, alongside Valleys mams, dads and bamps, described with great warmth. Other poems focus on the crammed terraces and abandoned high streets where a working-class and Welsh nationalist politics is hammered out. This is a post-industrial Valleys upbringing re-imagined through the prism of pop culture and surrealism.

About the author:

Jonathan Edwards was born in Newport, south Wales, in 1979, and has lived in the nearby village of Crosskeys all his life. He currently works as a teacher. My Family and Other Superheroes (Seren), his first collection, was also shortlisted for the Fenton Aldeburgh First Collection Prize and he won the Ledbury Poetry Festival Competition in 2014. His poetry and criticism have appeared in a wide range of magazines, including Poetry Review, Poetry Wales, New Welsh Review and The North. He has an MA in Writing from the University of Warwick, has written speeches for the Welsh Assembly Government and journalism for The Big Issue Cymru.

What the judges said:

“We haven’t had as much fun reading a poetry collection in ages. Joyous, brilliant and moving - this is a poet to celebrate.”

Judges:

Anna Dreda Independent Bookseller, Founder, Wenlock Poetry Festival

Charlotte Runcie Poet and Arts Journalist, Daily Telegraph

Owen Sheers Poet and Author

Shortlist, selected from a total of 76 entries:

Five Children on the Western Frontby Kate SaundersFaber and Faber

About the book:

When the Sand Fairy suddenly reappears after nine years, everything is different. Cyril is about to leave for war and the other children are nearly adults. It’s up to the Lamb and the youngest child, Edie, to try and help the Psammead get home. The siblings are pleased to have something to take their minds off the war, but the Psammead has lost his magic, and his past has caught up with him. Before this last adventure ends, everything will have changed, and the two younger children will have seen the Great War from every possible viewpoint - factory-workers, soldiers and sailors, nurses and the people left at home - and the war's impact will be felt right at the heart of their family.

About the author:

Kate Saunders is a full-time author and journalist and has written numerous books for adults and children.She has worked for newspapers and magazines in the UK, including The Sunday Times, Sunday Express, Daily Telegraph, She and Cosmopolitan. She has also been a regular contributor to radio and television, with appearances on the Radio 4 programmes Woman's Hour, Start the Week and Kaleidoscope.

Her books for children have won awards and received rave reviews, and include future classics such as Beswitched and The Whizz Pop Chocolate Shop. Her adult books include The Bachelor Boys and The Marrying Game. Kate lives in London.

What the judges said:

“This profoundly movingand magical story tackles the biggest themes – love, family and friendship – set against the horrors ofWWI.Kate Saunders’ astounding achievement is to have created a modern masterpiece that captures the spirit of a much-loved classic.”

Judges:

Lorna Bradbury Deputy Literary Editor, Daily Telegraph

Jake Hope Freelance Reading Development and Children’s Book Consultant
Jonathan Stroud Author

Shortlist, selected from a total of 146 entries:

Notes for Editors:

About the Costa Book Awards:

The Costa Book Awards, formerly the Whitbread Book Awards, were established in 1971 to encourage, promote and celebrate the best contemporary British writing.

The total prize fund for the Costa Book Awards – including the Costa Short Story Award - stands at £60,000.

The award winners from the five categories - Novel, First Novel, Biography, Poetry and Children’s Book - each receive £5,000.

The overall Costa Book of the Year is selected from the five category Award winners with the winner receiving a further £30,000.

The winner will be announced at an awards ceremony in central London on 27th January, 2015.

To be eligible for the 2014 awards, books must have been first published in the UK or Ireland between 1 November 2013 and 31 October 2014.

The 2013 Costa Book of the Year was The Shock of the Fall by Nathan Filer(Borough Press).