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Single parent wins £10,000 publishing contract in new writer competition

Posted 9 March 2018

Trapeze Books, Gingerbread and The Pool announce winner of the ‘One in Four’ competition for new writer with single parent background. A £10,000 publishing contract has today been awarded to single parent, Jemma Wallace, who will publish a novel that celebrates single parent families as part of the ‘One in Four’ new writer competition. Together with our partners Trapeze Books and The Pool, we chose Jemma’s submission for her novel Butterflies from over 250 entries from individuals with experience of single parent family life. It will be published in paperback and eBook in Summer 2019 by Trapeze Books, an imprint of Orion Publishing Group. Jemma will receive a £10,000 advance as part of the publishing contract, as well as representation from Rowan Lawton at Furniss Lawton and mentoring from novelist Tilly Bagshawe. Butterflies is a multi-generational novel that follows two women from the same family as they each embark on their own journeys through single parenthood in 1953 and 2012 respectively. It explores the varying perception of single parenthood, and was inspired by Jemma’s family as her grandmother raised her mother alone in the 1950s. Find out more about the winner and the competition.

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