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B. R. Collins (left) and her editor Emma Matthewson. | ||
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The Branford Boase Award for authors and their editors
The Henrietta Branford Writing Competition for young writers
Branford Boase Award 2010 - Last Year's Winners
The winner of the tenth Branford Boase Award is The Traitor Game, written by Bridget Collins and edited by Emma Matthewson from the publishers Bloomsbury. The announcement was made to a packed audience on the 9th July 2009 at an award ceremony held at Walker Books in London.
Chair of the judges, Julia Eccleshare commented: "We are delighted but not surprised to see the BBA growing in reputation year on year and becoming such a force for recognising and nurturing new talent. The outstanding success of past winners which has seen many BBA winners going on to take major prizes later in their careers is a testament to its success, and long may it continue. It would have made Henrietta Branford and Wendy Boase enormously proud to see what they cared for so much being fostered so well. B. R. Collins and Emma Matthewson are excellent winners to add to this tradition in this tenth anniversary year."
The Traitor Game is a powerful debut that explores the way boys create friendships and how fragile these relationships can be. Encompassing issues of bullying, homosexuality and peer pressure, The Traitor Game never pulls its punches. Set in two worlds it mixes the contemporary teen ‘issue’ novel with a traditional fantasy story. Both worlds may be different but the actions, emotions and eventual betrayals within them are very much the same.
Being bullied isn’t always about physical punches and B.R. Collins captures the psychological aspects of it brilliantly. The depiction of the fear, frustration and weakness that bullying brings will resonate strongly with anyone who has had to go through such a painful process. While the act of bullying translates to both worlds in the book, the consequences are very different but no less real.
Read an interview with B. R. Collins about bullying and writing The Traitor Game.
Winners 2009
B.R. Collins is 27 and based in Kent. She has won the Young National Poetry competition two years running and had two plays produced (one of which, a free adaptation of Trojan Women, was performed to critical acclaim at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe). She trained as an actor at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art and has recently finished filming on a small independent film. She has also completed an Arvon writing course where she was tutored by bestselling authors, Malorie Blackman and Linda Newbery. The Traitor Game was Bridget’s debut novel and her second, A Trick of the Dark, is published September 2009.