Not really being a fan of murder mystery or ‘who dunnit?’ plotlines, I was initially sceptical of Stuart Turton’s debut novel ‘The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle’. Yet, given its critical acclaim as winner of the Costa Book Awards 2018, I thought that there must be something more to it than the Cluedo storylines you…
We are delighted that author and BPA client Ruby Speechley has been signed by Hera for two psychological thrillers, the first of which will be published in July 2019. This success comes just less than a year after Ruby signed with agent Jo Bell from the Bell Lomax Moreton agency. Ruby is a talented writer…
Yesterday evening we had the pleasure of attending the launch for Carolyn Kirby’s debut novel ‘The Conviction of Cora Burns’. We are incredibly pleased about how far both the novel and Carolyn have come since we awarded her first prize in the inaugural blue pencil agency First Novel Award back in 2017, judged by agent…
Mandy Robotham is the author of “Breeder”, the story that was awarded the runner-up prize in the BPA First Novel Award Competition 2018. After completing a masters in creative writing at Oxford Brookes University, Mandy has won several prizes for her short stories. Our judges particularly enjoyed the tension and structure of Mandy’s writing and so we…
Jules Lampshire is the winner of the Blue Pencil Agency First Novel Award 2018 for her novel My Poor Deluded Girl which she wrote while attending the six month Faber Academy Writing a Novel programme in 2017. Our judges praised her work as being “one of those real moments in fiction where a reader can put themselves…
“She has never believed herself fit to be loved by any person. But now she has a new life, of which this is the first moment, and even after many years have passed she will still think: Yes, that was it, the beginning of my life” Sally Rooney’s novel ‘Normal People’ won the Costa…
What’s ‘Up Lit’? It’s the trend that everyone in the literary world has been talking about after it took 2018 by storm. There has been a surge in demand to read novels such as the award-winning ‘Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine’ and other ‘up lit’ titles such as ‘Three Things About Elsie’ by Joanna Cannon.…