Onjali Q Raúf and Sandy Horsley scoop BolognaBookPlus awards

UK authors Onjali Q. Raúf and Sandy Horsley are among this year’s BolognaBookPlus award recipients. 

Raúf’s The Boy at the Back of the Class (Orion) has won a silver award in the Nielsen Bestseller Awards Children’s Category, which recognises books that have sold more than 250,000 copies. Meanwhile, Horsley has scooped the newly introduced Indie Authors Book Jacket Award.

In addition to this, the Talking Pictures prize – which celebrates excellence in Ukrainian adult publishing – has gone to Projector Publishing for “The Telegraf”, a series of magazines exploring Ukrainian visual culture.

BolognaBookPlus author ambassador, Neil Packer, commented: “It was an honour and a privilege to be asked to help select a winner for Talking Pictures 2024. The breadth and depth of the entries was remarkable and in many cases the subject matter was profoundly moving […] The winning entries are of course very beautiful books, unique as ideas and stunning examples of design, but they also function perfectly in terms of conveying their content and thus perhaps fulfilling all the criteria for outstanding books.”

BolognaBookPlus was launched in 2020 by Bologna Children’s Book Fair in collaboration with the Italian Publishers Association. An extension of the main fair, it features an exhibition space, training conferences and a topical seminar programme, all dedicated to general trade publishing.

Jacks Thomas, guest director of BolognaBookPlus, commented: “Huge congratulations to all our award winners! To be in Bologna in April is a joy – a busy BolognaBookPlus nestles against a backdrop of a bustling BCBF – not to mention the opportunity of doing business across aligned industries at BLTF/Kids, plus a sellout new-look Bologna Rights Centre. I can only imagine how many deals are being done among the 100+ nations represented.”