LITERATURE
LAURA BATES AND PATRICE LAWRENCE IN CONVERSATION
Best known for her work as the founder of the Everyday Sexism Project, Laura Bates has also written acclaimed contemporary Young Adult novels, The Burning, The Trial and the first in a new fantasy series, Sisters of Sword and Shadow. On 8 July, she teams up with multi-award winning author Patrice Lawrence for our Young Adult Panel, to discuss the importance of representation in YA fiction and why young adults in particular need diverse books.
Patrice Lawrence is a multi-award-winning writer for children and young people with a background in social justice and equality, who writes across genres and age groups.
Her debut book for young adults, Orangeboy, was shortlisted for the Costa Children's Award and won the Bookseller YA Prize and Waterstones Prize for Older Children's Fiction. She has been nominated for the Carnegie Medal seven times. Her awards include the Little Rebels Book Award, the inaugural Jhalak Prize for Children and Young People, the Woman and Home Teen Drama Award, and the CrimeFest YA Prize twice. In 2023, she became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Patrice works extensively in schools inspiring young people to become storytellers and mentors adult writers from backgrounds under-represented in traditional British publishing.
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Representation in literature means so much more than ticking a box or putting a book in a niche category. It is about shared joy, appreciation and ambition, about making space for lost stories and giving words to those whose voices have historically been silenced. It matters for children, their aspirations and identity, and for all of us as a community. I am so hugely excited to discuss all this and much more with the brilliant Patrice Lawrence at Alton Arts Festival.
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-Laura Bates
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