Youth BookJam will be streaming to you LIVE by Zoom at 7pm on Tuesday 29th September, and we’ll be hearing from Cressida Cowell, Piers Torday, Jasbinder Bilan, Finbar Hawkins, Maximillian Hawker and Loris Owen with music from The BookShop Band.

The writers

Cressida Cowell is currently the Waterstones Children’s Laureate (2019 – 2022), as well as the the author and illustrator of the bestselling The Wizards of Once and How to Train Your Dragon books series. She has also written the Emily Brown picture books, illustrated by Neal Layton. Cressida is an ambassador for the National Literacy Trust and the Reading Agency, a Trustee of World Book Day and a founder patron of the Children’s Media Foundation. She has won numerous prizes, including The Blue Peter Book Award. She’ll be reading from her new book, The Wizard of Once: Never and Forever.

www.cressidacowell.co.uk | @CressidaCowell

Piers Torday began his career in theatre and then television as a producer and writer. His first book for children, The Last Wild, was shortlisted for the Waterstones Children’s Book Award and nominated for the CILIP Carnegie Medal. His second book, The Dark Wild, won the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize. There May Be A Castle was a People’s Book Award finalist and a Times Children’s Book of the Year. The Lost Magician was a Book of the Year in six national newspapers and won the Teach Primary Book Award. The follow up, The Frozen Sea, was published in 2019. Piers has also completed an unfinished novel by his late father Paul (author of Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, The Death of an Owl) and adapted The Box of Delights and A Christmas Carol for the stage.

www.pierstorday.co.uk | @PiersTorday | Insta @piers_torday

Finbar Hawkins is a graduate of the Bath Spa MA in Writing for Young People. He grew up in Blackheath, London and now lives in Wiltshire with his family. He is a creative director for Aardman in Bristol where he makes fun things for children of all ages.

@finbar_hawkins

Born in Bolton and made in Zimbabwe, Loris Owen has lived and worked in several countries in Europe, Africa and the Middle East. She grew up loving Roald Dahl, J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Susan Cooper and Lewis Carroll and there’s nothing she enjoys more than adventure stories about other worlds. Favourite contemporary authors include Philip Pullman, Markus Zusak, Kieran Larwood and Louis Sachar. Animals and nature have always been a creative force in Loris’s writing, and you’ll always find a lovable animal somewhere in her stories. The Ten Riddles of Eartha Quicksmith is a science fantasy book for ages 8+ and has been described as “a mind-blowing, puzzle-packed, epic adventure” by Kieran Larwood, author of the Five Realms series.

@lorisowen | www.lorisowen.com | www.quicksmiths.com

Maximilian Hawker is a writer who lives in Croydon, South London, with his wife and two daughters. He is author of the novel Breaking the Foals, and the forthcoming Rory Hobble and the Voyage to Haligogen (both published by Unbound). Since childhood, he has suffered with severe Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and does media advocacy on behalf of the charity OCD Action as and when he can. He also works full-time in frontline children’s social care, supporting looked-after children and care leavers.

https://www.maximilianhawker.com | @MaxHawker

Jasbinder Bilan is an award-winning writer. She was born in a stable near the foothills of the Himalaya and until she was eighteen months, lived on a farm inhabited by a grumpy camel and a monkey called Oma. Jasbinder’s debut, Asha And The Spirit Bird was nominated for the Carnegie Medal 2019, Longlisted for The Branford Boase 2019, Longlisted for The Jhalak Prize 2020, shortlisted for The Waterstones Book Prize 2020 and won the Costa Children’s Book Award 2019. Jasbinder’s latest novel Tamarind And The Star Of Ishta is another magical realist adventure set in the Himalaya, available from September 2020.

jasbinderbilan.co.uk | @jasinbath | Insta: @jasbinderbilan

The Bookshop Band formed in 2010 out of a collaboration between an award winning independent bookshop and a group of musicians, writing songs inspired by the books of visiting authors. Thirteen studio albums later the band have now worked with over 150 authors from around the world, including Philip Pullman, Joanne Harris and Robert Macfarlane, and have toured hundreds of bookshops in the UK, Europe and North America. They have just released their first LIVE album, recorded on their debut US tour last year, and are currently collaborating on an album with legendary rock musician, Pete Townshend.

www.thebookshopband.co.uk | @TheBookshopBand | Insta @bookshopband

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tinyurl.com/BookJam
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