Competition! Win a book by David Almond

David Almond

Staff at Scottish Book Trust have very kindly supplied us with a copy of Clay by David Almond as a prize in a competition we are running to promote their Meet our Authors event on 29th September. For more information, scroll to the bottom of this post, but first some information about David Almond and the event.

David Almond is the best-selling author of the award winning novel Skellig and many other titles (see the list in our catalogue). He was born in Newcastle upon Tyne in 1951 and grew up in the small mining town of Felling. After graduating he worked as a teacher for 5 years before stopping to concentrate on his writing. Skellig was published to immediate acclaim in 1998 and won both the Carnegie Medal (1998) and the Whitbread Children's Book Award (1998). In 2007, it was shortlisted for the Carnegie of Carnegies. His subsequent novels have gone on to win numerous awards including the Nestlé Smarties Book Prize (Silver Award) for Kit's Wilderness and the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award and Whitbread Children's Book Award for Fire-Eaters. He was the recipient of the Hans Christian Andersen Award in 2010.

On Thursday 29 September 2011 at 11am David will bring literature to life for children all across the country when he appears in a live internet broadcast. The event, and the Meet our Authors programme, is run by Scottish Book Trust and sponsored by Scottish Friendly Assurance. The programme is the first of its kind in the UK and anyone can watch here. (All the events in the series are also available to watch again later on the SBT website.) David will give tips on unlocking the potential of our imaginations on paper, including how his playful and messy approach to capturing great ideas has sustained his creative output during the writing of his 14 published books. He will talk about the writing process behind his latest books The True Tale of the Monster Billy Dean and The Savage. These stories are suitable for young people aged 10+ and have a readership ranging from teens to adults, they capture powerful emotional themes and are accessible to a broad range of readers.

David Almond will be the 9th children’s author to take part in the Meet our Authors project which began in 2010. To date more than 380,000 children across the UK have taken part in the webcasts. The live events are funded by the National Lottery through the Creative Scotland Inspiring Communities Fund.

To enter our competition (Strathclyde University Library members only – Library staff not eligible) just answer the following simple question:

In 2010, David Almond published a prequel to Skellig which centred on the character of Mina. What was the book? (Hint: look up our catalogue.)

To make things a little trickier, your answer must be presented as a bibliographic reference in APA format. See our handout and webpage on APA rules. There are competition forms in the Library, drop them off in the box at the Lending Services Desk, or send your answer to jordanhill.library@strath.ac.uk, quoting your library barcode number.

The closing date is 28th September and the winner will be picked at random from the corrrect entries and notified on the 29th. Good luck everyone!