Story Thief is about an 11-year-old failed asylum seeker called Arlie. She narrates her story of the days following the arrest and detention of her family as she tries to hide from the authorities. She is supported by her friend Louise and two boys who have their own reasons for staying in hiding. At the announcements of this year’s award, Mary Briggs, one of this year’s judges and the co-founder of Seven Stories, hinted at the twists in the plot that give Story Thief its name. She also described it as “not a happy story” and “distinctly depressing”, and perhaps the lack of hope is what would make this more suitable for older readers than the middle-reader audience the award is aimed at. However, apart from its local setting being close to Seven Stories’ heart, it was felt that it needed a special mention because it explores the horrors of asylum seekers’ situations and presents the reality of the sense of helplessness when dealing with the beaurocratic system.

Here, Karon tells us about her passion for the issues she highlights and why she wrote the story.

Story Thief is about Arlie, an eleven-year-old failed asylum seeker. When her mother and sister are taken in the night, to a detention centre, she is on a sleepover with her friend next door. She tries to run away, helped by her friend, Louise.

I was thrilled that Story Thief was a runner up in the Diverse Voices competition, especially as I’d written it very quickly. However, the ideas had been simmering for some time as I support Common Ground, the East Area Asylum Seekers Support Group, a voluntary organisation that gives friendship and practical help to asylum seekers.

The asylum seekers I’ve met – the woman who’d lost her nine-year-old daughter, the girl who’d been trafficked, the stateless woman – are real people, in desperate situations, yet living in hope. But at the same time, I saw endless press coverage about asylum seekers committing crimes or receiving generous benefits. Actually, asylum seekers in Britain get a £35-a-week card. If their application to be official refugees is rejected, they can be left destitute. They are not allowed to work. They can be moved with little notice, detained, deported.

The story grew from two incidents: reading in the Observer (18 October 2009) about children imprisoned in detention centres, without a fixed timescale or any public outcry; and when a friend was unexpectedly detained for an interview at the immigration office. As I was looking after her baby at the time, I tried to find out what had happened and discovered a secretive system with unhelpful staff.

I felt that I could hear Arlie’s voice in my head. She is bright and brave and loves school; she’d be a great asset to any community. I set it in Newcastle, because this is the city I’ve lived and worked in for twenty years now. I wanted the story to have a real sense of place – the mix of innovative projects and urban decay of the Ouseburn Valley, and the buzz of the Quayside only a mile from areas of social deprivation. I still hope Story Thief may be published in some form, as I feel Arlie’s voice needs to be heard. On the wall of a primary school I visited recently, a world map charts the pupils’ diversity: “Jonno has returned to Zimbabwe,” says a caption. “Voluntarily?” I asked the head teacher. He shook his head and told me another asylum seeker’s story.

There will be children in our cities who have a friend who can disappear, be imprisoned or be forcibly returned to a country they don’t call home. I would like young people to read this story and be absorbed into this world, a world where Arlie is their friend and they want to help her.

Thank you, Karon. We wish you every success for the future and hope that Arlie’s story will find its audience.

This year’s Frances Lincoln Diverse Voices Children’s Book Award was won by Tom Avery for his soon-to-be published and now-with-cover book Too Much Trouble; he has a great interview with Karon on his blog (and last year’s winner, Cristy Burne, has this interview with Tom on her fantastic blog). This photo shows all the winners and judges from this year’s award – click on it to see everybody’s names – yes, I’ve finally put my photos from the award evening up on Flickr… Better late than never – head on over and take a look.

The Frances Lincoln Diverse Voices Children’s Book Award for 2011 is now open for entries – for further details see here or here.

Too Much Trouble is the story of two [illegal immigrant] brothers, Emmanuel and Prince. Emmanuel tells us his story as he looks back on how events led to him holding a gun to a man’s head. The story opens on an ordinary day for the boys at school where they strive to go unnoticed, fending for themselves on handouts fom their drug-dealer uncle and living in a house where they compete for space with their uncle’s marijuana. But life changes completely when their temperamental uncle decides the boys are too much trouble and withdraws his already limited support. Left to look after themselves, the brothers are led into a life of crime from which Emmanuel cannot see a way out.

I have just returned home from Seven Stories in Newcastle, where the annoucement was made – and was lucky enough to hear Tom reading an extract from Too Much Trouble – it was part of where Emmanuel describes his last “ordinary day” – and I wished he could have continued a little longer. Instead, we will be looking forward to this time next year when Too Much Trouble will be published – just like the winner of last year’s inaugural Frances Lincoln Diverse Voices Award, Cristy Burne‘s Takeshita Demons, which was launched today (and do read Cristy’s great blog, which charts the book’s progress from manuscript to print…).

In my review of Takeshita Demons, I said I hoped there might be a sequel – well, it was really welcome news to hear today that not only will there be a second book published next year, with the intriguing title The Filth Licker, but in 2012 a third title will be published to complete the trilogy: The Matsui Monster.

Not only that, but Takeshita Demons is to be featured in Booktrust’s Children’s Book Week Pack, which will be sent to all UK primary schools, and has also been selected for this year’s Booked Up list, which gives a free book to every child in their first year at secondary school.

I will be writing a bit more about the awards evening soon – I just wanted to share the news straight away. Congratulations, both to Tom and to Cristy.

Frances Lincoln Limited, the award-winning publisher, and Seven Stories, the Centre for Children’s Books, are proud to announce the second Diverse Voices Award in memory of Frances Lincoln (1945 – 2001), to encourage and promote diversity in children’s fiction.

The Frances Lincoln Diverse Voices Children’s Book Award is for a manuscript that celebrates cultural diversity in the widest possible sense, either in terms of its story or the ethnic and cultural origins of its author.

The prize of £1,500, plus the option for Frances Lincoln Children’s Books to publish the novel, will be awarded to the best work of unpublished fiction for 8-to-12-year-olds by a writer, aged 16 years or over, who has not previously published a novel for children. The writer may have contributed to an anthology of prose or poetry. The work must be written in English and it must be a minimum of 15,000 words and a maximum of 35,000 words.

For more details and to download an entry form, visit the Seven Stories website.

Australian writer, Cristy Burne’s 2009 winning book, Takeshita Demons, is due to be launched at the 2010 award ceremony in June next year. After being tantalized by an extract at the 2009 Award ceremony (you can read my post about it here), I can’t wait! Cristy has a fabulous blog, which includes great interviews of the other shortlisted writers. She and her husband, along with their three-month-old baby, have just returned to Australia after living in the UK for two and a half years, so we wish them all the best for this new stage of their journey…

“There are dozens of supernatural yokai that most Japanese people will be familiar with. They appear over and over again in all kinds of stories. Some are benign, some are nasty and some you’re just not quite sure. The demons that Miku [the book’s young heroine] has to deal with include the nukekubi, a kind of child-eating flying-head demon, and the noppera-bo, a faceless demon that can take on other personae.

Most Western children don’t know about these yokai in the way that they know about vampires and werewolves, but just as vampires fear garlic, the demons often have an Achilles heel or fatal flaw. The nukekubi, for example, must leave its body somewhere while its hungry head flies around, and you can destroy the head by destroying the body. I chose the demons I thought would have the most potential for an adventure story, but there are plenty more for future stories. I like to write about children, especially strong girls, having great adventures.”

Created in memory of publisher Frances Lincoln, who died in 2001, the award was co-founded by Frances Lincoln Publishers and Seven Stories, the Centre for Children’s Books in Newcastle in the UK. The Award was announced on Thursday at Seven Stories, which was a magical and perfectly fitting place to host the evening and I will be devoting a separate post to it next week. This is a photo of Hannah Green, archivist at Seven Stories, with a display of books and manuscripts from the collection.

In her introduction to this inaugural presentation of the Award, Kate Edwards, Chief Executive of Seven Stories, talked about the importance of highlighting global communication in a way that will promote understanding; and of finding the right voices to communicate with the 8-12 age group. She made a very striking point about considering books as cultural mirrors – sometimes they offer a true reflection of their contemporary society; sometimes they distort or play with that reflection.

John Nicoll, Managing Director of Frances Lincoln Limited, then spoke as Frances’ husband of his quest to establish the right kind of project in her memory: and this, he felt, was exactly what she would have supported, in its promotion both of new talent and of good stories to provide a bridge for people who find the unknown challenging.

In all, there were fifty entries, mostly from the UK but also from Australia, Canada, Germany, India, New Zealand, Singapore, Sweden, Switzerland and the US, from writers from a wide range of ethnic backgrounds. These were whittled down by Seven Stories to a shortlist of ten and the panel of four judges selected the final four (who were all presented with a copy of the superb We Are All Born Free):

Winner: Takeshita Demons by Cristy Burne;
Highly Commended: The Gift by Gemma Birss;
Commended: The Ever-changing Mum by Ruth Patterson;
Special Mention: The Queen of Sheba’s Feet by Clare Reddaway.

The judges treated us to an outline of each of these books – and Cristy then read us a very exciting extract from Takeshita Demons, seated in Seven Stories’ glorious Storyteller’s throne. We will now have to be patient and wait for the book to go through the practical publishing process before we’ll be able to read the rest of it. And it was tantalising too to hear about the other three novels and not be able to run and pick them up afterwards!

At the beginning of this post I described the award as ground-breaking: this is because it seeks both to celebrate diversity and to foster new talent. Entries must be unpublished manuscripts aimed at 8-12 year olds from writers who have not previously published a novel for children (although they may have contributed to an anthology of prose or poetry). The Award’s stated purpose is fourfold:

To take positive steps to increase the representation of people writing from or about different cultural perspectives whose work is published in Britain today;
To promote new writing for children, especially by or about people whose culture and voice is currently under-represented;
To recognise that as children’s books shape our earliest perceptions of the world and its cultures, promoting writing that represents diversity will contribute to social and cultural tolerance;
To support the process of writing rather than, as with the majority of prizes, promoting the publication.

The closing date for entries for the 2010 Frances Lincoln Diverse Voices Children’s Book Award is 26 February 2010.

You can read more about the Award on both Seven Stories’ and Frances Lincoln’s websites, including how to enter…