So, we teamed up with The Times and Chicken House Books to find a manuscript with just one rule - the central character must be a Difference Maker who is engineering a better world.
Every year The Times and Chicken House Books run their Children’s Fiction Competition, for unpublished and un-agented writers of fiction for readers aged 7 to 18.
For our 150th anniversary, we joined forces to offer an extra prize - the IET 150 Award.
The IET 150 Award was created to celebrate the intersection between creativity and science and was to be awarded for a complete fiction manuscript that broadly explores or celebrates Science, Technology, Engineering, and Maths (STEM).
Out of many outstanding entries, we are delighted to announce the IET@150 Award went to Alison Stegert’s submission The Remarkables, winning a £10,000 publishing deal with Chicken House, and the offer of representation from PFD literary agent Lucy Irvine.
The Remarkables follows young Victorian inventor, Winnie, who is unexpectedly expelled from her progressive academy thanks to her father’s business disgrace and disappearance.
Winnie is set adrift with nothing but big debts and bigger dreams of World Fair glory when a mysterious agency conscripts her into Her Majesty’s Secret League of Remarkable Young Ladies …
The judging panel included our 150th anniversary President, Professor Danielle George, bestselling author Christopher Edge, and was chaired by Chicken House publisher Barry Cunningham.