Godden, Kanneh-Mason and Reynolds among winners at Indie Book Awards

Salena Godden, Kadiatu Kanneh-Mason and Jason Reynolds are among the winners of this year’s Indie Book Awards. 

The awards recognise the best paperback books of the summer, and are voted on by independent booksellers. 

Godden’s debut novel Mrs Death Misses Death (Canongate), triumphed in the fiction category. The novel tells the story of Mrs Death, who, exhausted by her job, seeks someone to unburden her conscience to. Kanneh-Mason took home the non-fiction prize with House of Music – Raising the Kanneh-Masons (Oneworld), a celebration of the musical talents of the family, which also serves as a window into issues of race and class in 21st-Century Britain. 

Reynolds scooped the children’s fiction award for When I Was the Greatest, illustrated by Akhran Girmay (Faber), while Joseph Coelho and Allison Colpoys won in the picture book category for My Beautiful Voice (Frances Lincoln Children’s Books). The duo previously won an Indie Book Award in the same category for If All the World Were… (Frances Lincoln Children’s Books) in 2019. 

Godden said it was a “huge privilege” to win. “I feel immense gratitude to bookshops and libraries and the book community on a whole and have so enjoyed visiting bookshops and meeting people passionate about literature in person and online since the book was published.

"I must also give thanks to the death positive movement and the global death positive community, it has been such a powerful and humbling experience to connect with readers in this time, with our shared grief and loss, our shared hope and resilience, with a book that specifically invites us to mourn the dead and fight like hell for the living and to celebrate our short time here. Thank you to every person who connected with Mrs Death Misses Death and the lives and hopes shared in these pages.” 

The UK-based winners will be presented with their awards in indie bookshops during Independent Bookshop Week. Godden will pick up her award at Libreria (London), the bookshop where she did her first paperback event for Mrs Death Misses Death, on 24th June at 1 p.m. 

Kanneh-Mason will be presented with her award at her local bookshop, The Bookcase (Lowdham), on 24th June at 11.30 a.m. Coelho will be receiving his award on 24th June at 11.30 a.m at Tales on Moon Lane (Ramsgate, Kent). Colpoys is based in Australia. 

Girmay, illustrator of When I Was the Greatest, will be presented with his award on 25th June at 11 a.m. at Moon Lane Books (London), in the presence of bookseller Indie Book Award Children’s judge Jasmine Dellimore. Reynolds is based in the US. 

Emma Bradshaw, head of campaigns at the Booksellers Association, said: “As Independent Bookshop Week draws to a close, we are thrilled to reveal the winners of the Indie Book Awards, ranging from debut novelists to New York Times bestselling authors, to former Indie Book Awards winners. The awards celebrate the best paperback reads of the summer, as recommended by independent booksellers. We are sure these books will delight and entertain lots of readers throughout the summer period (and beyond!). Many congratulations to all the winners, and we look forward to presenting them with their awards at their local bookshops.”