McKenna is a prolific writer of fantasy novels who also campaigns against the imposition of VAT on digital products sold in the EU, which hits small publishers and self-published authors hard.

The Karl Edward Wagner award for special achievement went to Juliet E McKenna – a surprise for her as she was hosting the awards ceremony. The best independent press gong went to Fox Spirit Books, set up by former book blogger Adele Wearing and comprising a mainly female editorial team. It was set up by Laurel Sills and Lucy Smee to celebrate diversity through fiction and essays. The quarterly online journal Holdfast Magazine was acclaimed best magazine/periodical. (I still keep double-checking the name on the award).”Īdam Nevill won the best horror novel award with No One Gets Out Alive, a creepy variation on the haunted house trope, with a young woman embarking on a nightmarish experience when she moves into a sinister shared house.Īway from the big winners, the awards were a triumph for diversity, honouring newcomers who have been making waves on the fantasy scene.

Hardinge, at the ceremony in her trademark black hat, later tweeted: “I am informed that, when my name was read out, my look of shock was highly comic.

Her seventh novel, The Lie Tree, is on the longlist for this year’s Guardian children’s fiction award.Ĭuckoo Song tells the story of a girl who almost drowns in a mysterious pond and, when she recovers, finds herself in a world that is slightly out-of-kilter with the one she remembers. Cuckoo Song is the sixth novel by Hardinge, who took the Branford Boase award with her debut, Fly By Night, in 2006, and has since been shortlisted for several children’s book prizes.

Cuckoo Song by Frances Hardinge