After a lot of deliberation, and some very industrious reading, the Great Reads Committee is ready to announce the longlist for the 2023 award. So many Great Reads in one place!! Thanks to all the publishers that submitted entries for consideration and to all those who put in the hard work to finalise the list. Do YOU want to get a head start and see if you can predict a shortlist?? Definitely try on the new longlist for size and hopefully one of your favourites makes our official Shortlist in September 🙂

Happy Reading!

Junior Category

• Nick Brooks for Promise Boys
• Meabh Collins for Freya Harte is Not a Puzzle
• Amy Clarkin for What Walks These Halls
• Anika Hussain for This is How You Fall in Love
• Xena Knox for Sh!t Bag
• Aislinn O’Loughlin for Big Bad Me
• Amara Sage for Influential
• Josh Silver for Happy Head
• M.J. Sullivan for Game Over: Rise of the Raid Mob
• Trang Thanh Tran for She is a Haunting

Senior Category

• James Acker for The Long Run
• Sam Blake for Something Terrible Happened Last Night
• Candice Braithwaite for Cuts Both Ways
• Triona Campbell for A Game of Life or Death
• Sarah Daniels for The Stranded
• Jenny Éclair for The Writing on the Wall
• Bryony Gordon for Let Down Your Hair
• Ravena Guron for This Book Kills
• Jenny Ireland for The First Move
• Clara Kumagai for Catfish Rolling
• Krystal Marquis for The Davenports

From ten down to two!

Huge congratulations to Philly McMahon for taking the Junior prize for the Great Reads Award with ‘The Choice’ and to Erik J Brown for taking the Senior prize with ‘All that’s Left in the World‘. Deserved Winners and it was a joy to be able to put both of these super reads on our 2022 shortlists. If you haven’t given either of these a read yet, definitely put them on your list, you won’t be disappointed! Congratulations Philly and Erik from all of here at the Great Reads team!

Our voting is now closed and the results have been counted and verified! The excitement is almost too much, but we will wait until our Award Ceremony on Thursday, March 2nd, 2023 to officially announce our winners. Thanks so much to all of you that voted and took the time to read the amazing titles on our shortlists….. and we hope that your fave made it to the very top!

We are so pleased, and let’s face it, incredibly excited, to announce that shortlisted senior author, Louise Finch will be joining the amazing Dave Rudden, in conversation next week.

On Friday, the 27th of January at 11.30 am, Louise will be chatting with Dave to discuss her own writing and delving deep into the topic of ‘Grief and how YA Literature Deals With Big Life Issues’. There’s plenty of time to have a read of The Eternal Return of Clara Hart’ before Friday, but also, anyone who has the reading habit in general, can feel free to join in the discussion!

This will be an online event, so please register your interest in taking part by emailing us at greatreadsaward@gmail.com and we czn give you the joining details and any other information you need.

There will also be a set of newly published books to be won for your school that includes Helena Close’s ‘Things I know’, Meg Grehan’s ‘Baby Teeth‘, Philip Womack’s ‘Wildlord’ , Aislinn O’Loughlin’s ‘Big Bad Me’ and Louise’s ‘The Eternal Return of Clara Hart’. |n addtion to this there are 15 individual copies of ‘The Eternal Return of Clara Hart’ to be won over the course of the event! Sure look, it’s TOO good to miss, so join us on the 27th and don’t forget to contact us greatreadsaward@gmail.com