Nikesh Shukla, Jasmine Richards and Elle McNicoll have been shortlisted for The Diverse Book Awards’ Malorie Blackman Impact Award 2024 ahead of next week’s fifth finalists party on 10th October 2024 at Waterstones Piccadilly in London.

https://www.thediversebookawards.co.uk/the-malorie-blackman-impact-award

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The Malorie Blackman Impact Award is sponsored by leading book publicity and author marketing consultancy, Literally PR (www.literallypr.com).

Created by bestselling, award-winning author Abiola Bello and prize-winning publicist Helen Lewis, The Malorie Blackman Impact Award is now in its second year. “We want to highlight the best of the diverse voices published in the UK & Ireland both traditionally and self-published. We believe there’s a need to showcase the talent of marginalised voices, so we came up with The Diverse Book Awards to open a space where the spotlight is on them.”

The winners of The Diverse Book Awards, Readers’ Choice Award and The Malorie Blackman Impact Award will be announced on October 10th at the awards ceremony at Waterstones Piccadilly in London. Press passes are available upon request: hello@thediversebookawards.co.uk.

The Malorie Blackman Award was created to celebrate inspirational authors, poets or illustrators making a genuine impact in terms of diversity and inclusion.

Nikesh Shukla

Nikesh is a novelist and screenwriter, currently working on a Spider-Man India comic book miniseries for Marvel as well as numerous television projects. Most recently, he released his first children’s book, called The Council Of Good Friends.

He is the author of Coconut Unlimited (shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award), Meatspace and the critically acclaimed The One Who Wrote Destiny. Nikesh is the editor of the bestselling essay collection, The Good Immigrant, which won the reader’s choice at the Books Are My Bag Awards. He co-edited The Good Immigrant USA with Chimene Suleyman.

He is the author of three YA novels, Run, Riot (shortlisted for a National Book Award), The Boxer (longlisted for the Carnegie Medal) and Stand Up. Nikesh was one of Time Magazine’s cultural leaders, Foreign Policy magazine’s 100 Global Thinkers and The Bookseller’s 100 most influential people in publishing in 2016 and in 2017.

He is the co-founder of The Good Literary Agency and the Jhalak Prize. Nikesh’s memoir, Brown Baby: A Memoir Of Race, Family And Home was longlisted for the Jhalak Prize. He has also written a book on writing called Your Story Matters.

Nikesh wrote the award-winning short film, Two Dosas, a Channel 4 Comedy Lab called Kabadasses and has worked in numerous writer’s rooms both in the UK and US.

Jasmine Richards

Jasmine has over 18 years of experience in children’s publishing. She was the Lead Editor on the multi-million-selling series Beast Quest and has written a dozen books for children, including The Unmorrow Curse and Myth Keeper. Jasmine has also been a screenwriter on Disney’s PJ Masks and BBC’s JoJo and Gran Gran.

In 2019, she founded Storymix, a multi-award-winning fiction studio dedicated to centring children and teens of colour in stories filled with joy and adventure. Since its inception, Storymix has sold over 250,000 copies of its titles and received multiple industry awards including the Future Book Award and the Deutsche Bank Awards for Creative Entrepreneurship (DBACE)

.In 2023, Jasmine received a prestigious special commendation in the Editor of the Year category at the British Book Awards. She is also a Bookseller Rising Star and the creator of The Write Beach Hut, a creative sanctuary by the sea which is designed to nurture and empower writers and creatives through workshops, mentoring, and affordable writing retreats.

Elle McNicoll

Elle is a best-selling and award-winning novelist and screenwriter. Her debut, A Kind of Spark, won the Overall Waterstones Children’s Book Prize in 2021. It was also voted number 75 in The 100 Greatest Children’s Books of All Time in 2023.

She is the founder of the Adrien Prize, that provides a positive portrayal of a protagonist with a disability.

Elle is a four-time Carnegie-nominated author and was also honoured in the US with the Schneider Award, 2022. Her first novel has also been adapted for television by the BBC, and McNicoll was head writer on the project. The adaptation was described in the press as ‘groundbreaking’ for its inclusion of autistic actors and crew.

She is Scottish, autistic and an advocate for better neurodiversity representation in publishing. Some Like It Cold is her YA debut. She has been dreaming of writing autistic romance stories for most of her life. She lives in North London.