Leading writers, editors and agents in the UK publishing industry have contributed to the Undiscovered Voices anthologies as judges and honorary chairs. The judges select the final pieces to be featured in the anthology while the honorary chairs provide inspiration both in the anthology and the launch event.

Please note that the job titles and companies listed for the judges are correct at the time of each anthology release. Many will have subsequent changed roles or moved companies.

Check out what happened to the previous finalists after the anthology.

2022

Writing Judging Panel

• Davinia Andrew-Lynch, literary agent and the founder of the boutique agency ANDLYN
• Megan Carroll, literary agent at Watson, Little Ltd
• Sarah Davies, founder and agent at Greenhouse Literary Agency
• Jane Griffiths, editorial director at Penguin Random House Children’s Books
• Sarah Levison, senior commissioning editor at Farshore Books
• Yasmin Morrissey, commissioning editor at Scholastic
• Jo Williamson, literary agent at Antony Harwood Ltd

2022 Honorary Author Chair
Patrice Lawrence

Patrice Lawrence is an award-winning writer.
Her debut YA novel, Orangeboy (Hachette), won the Bookseller YA Prize and the Waterstones Prize for Older Children’s Fiction and was shortlisted for the Costa Children’s Book Award. Her subsequent novels have been much acclaimed and frequent visitors to prize lists including the Jhalak Children’s and Young Adult Prize 2021 and the YA Book Prize 2021. Needle (Barrington Stoke) is shortlisted for the Yoto Carnegie Medal for Writing 2023.

Patrice’s latest ground-breaking book, The Elemental Detectives (Scholastic) is the page-turning, empowering, heart-racing first book in a major new middle-grade series.

Patrice was born in Brighton, raised in an Italian-Trinidadian family in mid-Sussex, and now lives on the South Coast.

2020

Writing Judging Panel

• HELEN BOYLE, Literary Agent, Pickled Ink
• ANNALIE GRAINGER, Senior Commissioning Editor, Walker Books
• STEPHANIE KING, Commissioning Fiction Editor, Usborne Publishing
• POLLY NOLAN, Literary Agent, Greenhouse Agency
• ALICE SUTHERLAND-HAWES, Children’s Agent, Madeleine Milburn Literary Agency
• CLARE WALLACE, Literary Agent, Darley Anderson Children’s Book Agency

2020 Honorary Author Chair
Candy Gourlay

Candy Gourlay was born in the Philippines, grew up under a dictatorship and met her husband during a revolution. Growing up, she wondered why books only featured pink-skinned children who lived in worlds that didn’t resemble her tropical home in Manila. It took her years to learn that Filipino stories belong in the pages of books too.

Her novel Bone Talk was recently shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal and the Costa Prize – it is set at the moment when headhunting tribes in the Philippines come face to face with American invaders. Her picture book, Is It a Mermaid, illustrated by Francesca Chessa, was nominated for the Kate Greenaway Medal. Her books have been shortlisted for the Branford Boase, Waterstones, Blue Peter and Guardian Children’s Book Prize.

Candy is an ardent volunteer of SCBWI and was a winner of the first Undiscovered Voices in 2008. Both her novels Shine and Tall Story have won SCBWI’s Crystal Kite Award. Her fingerprints are all over SCBWI’s online presence, from its jurassic list-serve days to its current experiments in livestreaming events. She is currently devising events and opportunities for published members as co-organiser of SCBWI’s Pulse strand.

She lives in London with her family, where she wages war on the snails in her garden.

2018

Writing Judging Panel

• LAUREN FORTUNE, Fiction Editorial Director, Scholastic Children’s Books
• SARAH LEONARD, Commissioning Editor, Orchard Books
• JOANNA MOULT, Literary Agent, Skylark Literary Limited
• POLLY NOLAN, Literary Agent, Greenhouse Agency
• GILLIE RUSSELL, Literary Agent, Aitken Alexander Associates
• HANNAH SHEPPARD, Literary Agent, DHH Literary Agency
• KIRSTY STANSFIELD, Head of Fiction, Nosy Crow

Illustration Judging Panel

• CHRISSIE BOEHM, Agent, Artful Doodlers
• CLAIRE CARTEY, Agent, Holroyde Cartey Agency
• ANDREA KEARNEY, Senior Designer, Bloomsbury Children’s Books
• WILL STEELE, Senior Designer, Faber and Faber
• NGHIEM TA, Assistant Art Director, >Walker Books

2018 Honorary Author Chair
Frances Hardinge

Frances Hardinge was brought up in a sequence of small, sinister English villages, and spent a number of formative years living in a Gothic-looking, mouse-infested hilltop house in Kent. She studied English Language and Literature at Oxford, fell in love with the city’s crazed archaic beauty, and lived there for many years.

Whilst working full time as a technical author for a software company she started writing her first children’s novel, Fly by Night, and was with difficulty persuaded by a good friend to submit the manuscript to Macmillan. Seven of her books have now been published, all aimed at children and young adults. Her most recent book, The Lie Tree, won the Costa Book of the Year Award, the fiction category of the Boston Globe Hornbook Award and the 12-16 age category of the UKLA Awards.

Frances is seldom seen without her hat and is addicted to volcanoes.

2018 Honorary Illustrator Chair
Alexis Deacon

Alexis Deacon is a writer and illustrator of children’s books. His first book, Slow Loris, was published in 2002 and was shortlisted for the Blue Peter Book Award. In 2015 it was named one of the hundred best children’s books of all time by Time Magazine.

He has twice been shortlisted for the Kate Greenaway Medal and is a two time recipient of The New York Times Best Illustrated Children’s Books Award. In 2014, The River, won the Observer/Jonathan Cape/Comica Graphic Short Story Prize.  In 2008 he was chosen by Booktrust as one of the ten best new illustrators of the preceding decade.

Alexis’ latest book, Geis, Nobrow Press, is the first in an epic trilogy genre-spanning a mix of supernatural, historical fantasy, action and folk tale.

2016

Writing Judging Panel

• JON APPLETON, Fiction Editorial Director, Hodder Children’s Books
• BARRY CUNNINGHAM, Publisher and Managing Director, Chicken House
• RACHEL MANN, Children’s Fiction Editor, Simon & Schuster UK
• POLLY NOLAN, Literary Agent, Greenhouse Agency
• ANNA POWER, Literary Agent, Johnson & Alcock
• KATE SHAW, Literary Agent, The Viney Agency
• CAROLINE WALSH, Literary Agent, David Higham Associates

Illustration Judging Panel

• ALI ARDINGTON, Art Director, Stripes Publishing
• ED BURNS, CEO and Illustration Agent, Advocate Arts Agency
• JODIE HODGES, Agent, United Agents
• WILL STEELE, Senior Designer, Faber and Faber
• SHERI GEE, Art Director, Folio Society

2016 Author and Illustrator Honorary Chair
Sally Gardner

Sally Gardner served as the honorary chair for the 2014 anthology across both writing and illustrating disciplines. She is an illustrator of over 25 books, an award-winning novelist who has sold over 2 million books in the UK and her work has been translated in to more than 22 languages. Sally’s novel, Maggot Moon (Hot Key Books 2012), won both the Costa Children’s Book Prize and the Carnegie Medal 2013. Sally’s genre-defying novel, The Double Shadow (Orion 2011) received great critical acclaim and was also longlisted for the Carnegie Medal 2013. The Red Necklace (shortlisted for 2007 Guardian Book Prize) and The Silver Blade, are set during the French Revolution, the film rights for which have been purchased by Dominic West. Sally also won the 2005 Nestle Children’s Book Prize for her debut novel ‘I, Coriander’.

You can hear her message to the 2016 finalists here.

2014

Writing Judging Panel

• GEMMA COOPER, Literary Agent, The Bent Agency
• BEN HORSLEN, Editorial Director, Puffin
• SARAH LAMBERT, Editorial Director at Quercus Children’s Books
• SARA O’CONNOR, Editorial Director for Print & Digital at Hot Key Books
• SAMANTHA SMITH, Fiction Publisher, Scholastic
• SALLYANNE SWEENEY, Literary Agent, Watson, Little Ltd
• POLLY NOLAN, Literary Agent, Greenhouse Agency

Illustration Judging Panel

• FRANCES MCKAY, Frances McKay Illustration Agency
• ANNA BILLSON, Art Director, Penguin Children’s Books
• HELEN GRAHAM-CAMERON, Graham-Cameron Illustration Agency
• NGHIEM TA. Senior Designer, Digital Content Coordinator, Templar Publishing
• MARTIN SALISBURY, Course Leader, MA Children’s Book Illustration, Director, The Centre for Children’s Book Studies

2014 Author and Illustrator Honorary Chair
Chris Riddell

Chris Riddell served as the honorary chair for the 2014 anthology across both writing and illustrating disciplines.

Chris Riddell is an accomplished graphic artist who has illustrated many acclaimed books for children. He has won the UNESCO Award for Something Else, has twice won the Kate Greenaway Medal, and was shortlisted for the Kurt Maschler Award. With Paul Stewart, he is the creator of the highly successful Edge Chronicles, Barnaby Grimes and Far Flung Adventures. He is also the acclaimed political cartoonist for the Observer. He has illustrated over 100 books for children of all ages.

You can download the honorary chair’s introduction and cartoons in the previous anthology here.

2012

Writing Judging Panel

• JO ANNE COCADIZ, Book Buyer/Seller, Foyles (Children’s Books)
• AMBER CARAVEO, Editorial Director, Orion Children’s Books
• JULIA CHURCHILL, Literary Agent, Greenhouse Literary Agency
• DAGMAR GLEDITZSCH, Literary Scout
• CATHERINE PELLEGRINO, Literary Agent, Literary Catherine Pellegrino and Associates
• JASMINE RICHARDS, Senior Commissioning Editor, Oxford University Press
• JENNY SAVILL, Literary Agent, Andrew Nurnberg Associates
• RACHEL BODEN, Commissioning Editor, Egmont

Illustration Judging Panel

• STEPHANIE ALEXANDER, Illustration Agent, Artworks Illustration Agency
• ANNA BILLSON, Art Director, Penguin Children’s Books
• VAL BRATHWAITE, Art Director, Bloomsbury Children’s Books
• TAMLYN FRANCIS, Illustration Agent, Arena Illustrators Agency
• DAVID MCDOUGALL, Art Director, Walker Books

 

2012 Authors Honorary Chair
Malorie Blackman

The BAFTA-winning author Malorie Blackman, who has written over 50 books for children, including the Noughts and Crosses series and Boys Don’t Cry.

You can also download the honorary chair’s introductions to the previous anthologies here.

 

2012 Illustrators Honorary Chair
Nick Sharratt

The award-winning illustrator Nick Sharratt, who has illustrated over 200 books, including the most borrowed book of the last ten years: The Story of Tracy Beaker.

You can also download the honorary chair’s introductions to the previous anthologies here.

 

2010

Writing Judging Panel

• JULIA CHURCHILL, Literary Agent, The Greenhouse Literary Agency
• LINDSEY HEAVEN, Senior Fiction Editor, Puffin Books
• SARAH MANSON, Literary Agent, Sarah Manson Agency
• JO UNWIN, Literary Agent, Conville and Walsh
• EMMA YOUNG, Editor, Macmillan Children’s Books
• ZOE DUNCAN, Editor, Scholastic Children’s Books

 

2010 Authors Honorary Chair
Melvin Burgess

Melvin Burgess is held by many as the godfather of young adult fiction and is the author of books such as Junk, Bloodtide, Doing It and Nicholas Dane.

You can also download the honorary chair’s introductions to the previous anthologies here.

 

2008

Writing Judging Panel

• CATHERINE COE, Senior Editor, Orchard Books
• SARAH DAVIES, Literary Agent, The Greenhouse Literary Agency
• LINDA DAVIS, Literary Agent, Greene & Heaton Literary Agency
• LINDSEY HEAVEN, Senior Fiction Editor, Puffin Books
• SHANNON PARK, Senior Editor, Random House Children’s Books
• CAROLINE SHELDON, Literary Agent, Caroline Sheldon Literary Agency

 

2008 Authors Honorary Chair
David Almond

David Almond, the award-winning author of children’s books, including Skellig, Kit’s Wilderness, The Fire-Eaters, and Clay.

You can also download the honorary chair’s introductions to the previous anthologies here.