Troika fiction & poetry longlisted in 2025 UKLA Book Awards

Hearty congratulations to Troika authors Stephen Lightbown and Rachel Delahaye for their recent longlistings in the much-coveted UKLA Book Awards 2025!

The UKLA (UK Literary Association) Book Awards are the only children's book awards judged by teachers. The Awards span three age group categories: 3-6+, 7-10+ and 11-14+, with a fourth category for information books for ages 3-14+.

Longlisted in the 7-10+ category is Stephen Lightbown’s debut poetry collection for children, And I Climbed, And I Climbed. The book, which draws on Stephen’s personal experiences of disability to chart the story of Cosmo, a young boy who falls from the tree he loves to climb, is beautifully illustrated by Shih-Yu Lin and has already been shortlisted for the CLiPPA Award 2024 as well as being a National Poetry Day 2024 Recommendation.

Longlisted in the 11-14+ category is Rachel Delahaye’s novel Electric Life, a fast-paced and thrilling adventure set in a futuristic utopia - or so it seems. Estrella is the ‘perfect’ society: an immaculate, sanitised, hyper-connected environment where everything is channelled through the digital medium. But when teenage gaming prodigy Alara is sent on a mission to the ‘old world’ where noise, dirt and sometimes pain are everyday experiences, butwhere food is not synthetic and tastes real, she may be about to discover that life in Estrella is not entirely as it would appear.

Writing about the “extraordinary” 2025 selections, the Award judges said,”There can be no doubt that the longlists published today exemplify the award criteria’s aim of encouraging teachers’ knowledge of high-quality children’s books, that can reflect all identities and promote diversity.”

“These awards are completely uninfluenced by any commercial factors, such as sales or expensive marketing campaigns, and they do not require the payment of fees at any point in the process. This significantly opens the opportunity to promote their books in the valuable school market, to the small independent publishers and it is these who are often the ones that shine through. This is certainly the case this year.”

The shortlists will be announced in March 2025 and the winners in July. We wish everyone the best of luck, and our fingers are of course crossed for Stephen and Rachel!