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The Times/Chicken House long list is here!

Firstly, we’d like to thank everyone who entered competition. The standard of entries was incredibly high and our readers have had a blast reading all of the submissions. We were impressed by the scope of imagination and talent – it’s been a tough job to narrow down to the final twenty.

This year the longlist is split between 6 middle-grade, 12 YA manuscripts and 2 younger fiction, containing everything from gritty contemporary and gothic adventure to diverse fantasy and speculative dystopian. With portals, Christmas, magic and animals, this list has it all! So, drumroll please, here is the 2023 longlist:

1. A Time of Hare and Serpents - Zoe Gilbert
2. Beth Death - Amanda Poll
3. Between the Monster and Man – Will Tyrrell
4. Brandon and the Boy – Pixi Robertson
5. Chasing Spirits – Mekeisha McDonald
6. Daughters of Rowan – Hannah Watson
7. Ellie Anderson is Dead – Sophie Clarke
8. Henry Mouse – Michael Lavelle
9. Kam the Cloud Genie – Ashia Mirza
10. Love On Sight – Asli Jensen
11. Matters of the Universe – Lisa Sills
12. Of Sea and Sky - Annahita De La Mare
13. Past the Curfew – Jemma Sykes
14. Solomon Brown from Hero Town – Ian Brownlie
15. Spears in the Dark – Hadiyah Khan
16. Supers – Maggie Womersley
17. The Blood Bargain – Sofia Reynoso
18. The Hatt Shop – Shervelle Kennelly
19. The Pouka King – Marisa Linton
20. Unspoken – Dawn Maria Kelly

Huge congratulations to our talented longlisted authors. We can’t wait to find out which five of these stories will reach our shortlist – and which will win our two prizes of publication! We hope to announce the shortlist here on our website and across our social media channels by the beginning of October, so watch this space for more news…