Ampersand Prize 2022 shortlist announced

Hardie Grant Children’s Publishing (HGCP) has announced the shortlist for the 2022 Ampersand Prize for unpublished young adult and middle-grade manuscripts. The winner receives an advance and publishing contract from HGCP.

The five shortlisted manuscripts and their authors are:

• ‘The Boy Maeve’ by Kai Ash (YA), a ‘beguiling, gripping’ YA fantasy that follows a 14-year-old trans boy called Maeve whose relationship with his adoptive family is upended when he learns that his biological father is alive and wants to take him back to the Otherworld where Maeve was born
• ‘Maria Petranelli is Prepared for Anything (Except This)’ by Elisa Chenoweth (YA), described by HGCP as Looking for Alibrandi meets Arrested Development, is an ‘outrageously funny, tender-hearted, screwball’ YA comedy about an overbearing Italian-Australian family and their only daughter’s quest to strike out on her own
• ‘The Nose: Batthew Aromascent and the Missing Corpse Flower’ by Ella Mulvey and John Roebuck (MG), which follows Batthew Aromascent, the 10-year-old heir to a famed fragrance house Olfactory, and his best friend Lavender, who are on the case and ready for adventure when the world’s largest flower goes missing
• ‘Inked’ by Karen Wasson (MG), a ‘laugh-out-loud funny, enemies-to-besties’ middle-grade graphic novel about a pompous talking octopus called Otto and shy 12-year-old Sid, who just wants him to go away
• ‘Love, Ruby’ by Tamara Hajdu (YA), a ‘tense, insightful and sensitive’ portrayal of a student-teacher relationship, which is quickly revealed to be both predatory and dangerous, explored through a series of emails between the student and her favourite author.

‘We had so many fabulous submissions this year that it was very challenging to narrow down our shortlist to these five wonderful manuscripts—but at the end of the day, each of these books had something intoxicating and extraordinary about them,’ said publishing director Marisa Pintado. ‘We are very confident that each of these authors has a sparkling publishing career ahead of them.’

The winner of the previous Ampersand Prize, awarded in 2020, was H S Valley. Her winning YA novel Tim Te Maro and the Subterranean Heartsick Blues was published in 2021. HGCP also acquired two additional titles from the 2020 Ampersand Prize shortlist: Completely Normal (and Other Lies) by Biffy James and We Who Hunt the Hollow by Kate Murray, both of which were published earlier this year.

The winner of the 2022 Ampersand Prize will be announced on Monday, 17 October. For more information, see the HGCP website.

Category: Awards Junior Local news