Margaret McDonald adds prestigious Branford Boase Award to her list of prizes, this time sharing the honour with her editors, Alice Swan and Ama Badu of Faber.
Margaret McDonald and her editors Alice Swan and Ama Badu are winners of the 2025 Branford Boase Award for outstanding debut novel for young people with Glasgow Boys, a moving, beautifully written coming-of-age novel exploring the power of identity, community and masculinity. This brings to three the number of awards Glasgow Boys has received (it also won the Carnegie Medal for Writing and the UKLA Award) but the Branford Boase Award is unique in honouring editor as well as author.
Margaret McDonald describes her editorial relationship with Alice Swan and Ama Badu as unlike any other creative experience because, “they treated Banjo and Finlay as I do myself, which is as real people.” She adds, “I worked on every single aspect of Glasgow Boys with Alice and Ama, and it wouldn’t exist as it does today without them, truly.”
The 2025 Henrietta Branford Writing Competition, the annual competition for young people which runs in conjunction with the Branford Boase Award, is now closed and the winners have been chosen.
The competition aims to find and encourage writers of the future, something Henrietta was always keen to do. Anyone under the age of 19 can enter.
This year’s theme for the Henrietta Branford Writing Competition was inspired by the book that won the Branford Boase Award in 2024, Steady For This by Nathanael Lessore. Nathanael’s book is bright, funny, joyful and fresh; it makes readers laugh out loud. Make ‘em laugh!
The Branford Boase Award is delivered in partnership with the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS) and supported by Walker Books.
Andrea Reece
30 Winton Avenue, London, N11 2AT
Tel: 0208 889 1292
Mob: 07807 893369
Email: branford.boase@gmail.com
Andrea Reece
Tel: 07807 893369 | Email: branford.boase@gmail.com