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After a great deal of um-ing, ah-ing and lively discussion by our panel of judges on our incredibly competitive shortlist, the moment has finally arrived ...

Drumroll please: we’re ready to announce the winners of the 2020 Times/Chicken House Children’s Fiction Competition!

The Overall Winner is Adjay and the Mumbai Rail Times by Varsha Shah!

Adjay and the Mumbai Rail Times follows a twelve-year-old railway kid in contemporary India who, together with his friends, starts a newspaper on an abandoned printing press.

The winner of the Chairman’s Choice Award is The Other Ones by Fran Hart!

The Other Ones is a contemporary YA ghost story with a twist. It’s a story about being different, friendship, acceptance and first love, and was written for anyone who has ever felt like the odd one out.

Huge congratulations to our winners – we can’t wait to start working with you on developing, publishing and promoting your amazing novels! Thanks, too, to our brilliant panel of judges – we don’t know how we’d have decided without you.

And congratulations to each one of our shortlistees – what an amazing achievement to reach the final five! – and to our astonishingly strong longlist of eighteen. Thank you to everyone who entered the competition this year; we really couldn’t do it without you.

And guess what? To anyone who didn’t make it this time, we’d love to invite you to try again next year. The new competition is opening next week and we have some VERY exciting details to share.

Watch this space …