Prize-winning novelist who won the Costa award for Five Children on the Western Front and whose Belfry Witches stories were adapted for TV
February 2023
Georgina Hammick obituary
Poet and writer whose protagonists are often women comically uncomfortable inside outdated traditions of femininity
December 2022
‘Someone will get whipped – the white men’: the amazing period drama that rewrites stories of slavery
Part whodunnit, part queer romance tale, The Confessions of Frannie Langton is subverting the genre. Its writer and star explain a dark, twisted drama – and its route to murder
July 2022
The Guardian view on book prizes: don’t forget the children
Rathbones Folio prize ‘refreshing format’ to expand to three categories
June 2022
Shock ending: how the Costa book awards changed reading – and pitted husband against wife
Costa book awards scrapped suddenly after 50 years
May 2022
‘The pendulum has swung’: Why we female Trinidadian writers are having our moment
Monique Roffey, the Costa-winning author of The Mermaid of Black Conch, on the lit-boom that’s happening on the Caribbean island
February 2022
Costa winner Hannah Lowe: ‘Should teachers write about students? That question’s too categorical’
‘Uplifting’ book of sonnets by Hannah Lowe wins Costa book of the year
January 2022
Caleb Azumah Nelson wins Costa first novel award for Open Water
Judges praise ‘searingly intimate’ debut, while Claire Fuller wins best novel and John Preston takes biography prize
November 2021
Costa prize 2021 shortlists highlight climate anxiety
Jessie Greengrass’s novel The High House, set in a flood-devastated Suffolk was one of several of the nominees to focus on global heating, said judges
July 2021
Books that made me
Monique Roffey: ‘William Golding’s The Inheritors gave me ideas for how I could write a mermaid’
The Costa winner on the James Baldwin novel she most cherishes, devouring Willard Price adventures as a child, and the sex scene she wishes she had written
January 2021
'I'm flabbergasted': Monique Roffey on women, whiteness and winning the Costa
'Utterly original' Monique Roffey wins Costa book of the year
Books interview
Lee Lawrence: 'I loved revisiting the parts of my childhood before the shooting'
Lee Lawrence’s memoir of his mother’s shooting by police wins Costa award
December 2020
Top 10s
Top 10 books about mermaids
Away from Disney’s candied revisions, these stories – from Hans Christian Andersen to Helen Dunmore – tell archetypal truths about women’s experience
November 2020
Costa book awards: Susanna Clarke nominated for second novel after 16-year wait
Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell author picked for Piranesi, alongside Denise Mina, Julian Barnes and the late Eavan Boland, in prizes for ‘enjoyable’ books
October 2020
Maggie O'Farrell: 'I wrote at least 17 separate drafts of After You'd Gone'
The Costa and Women’s prize winner on the long gestation of her debut novel
