‘Now, more than ever, books matter’ – Kate Mosse announced as 2024 SoA Awards keynote speaker

Photo © Ruth Crafer
Picture of Teddy McDonald

Teddy McDonald

Teddy works on SoA communications and outreach and alongside the Policy department on the SoA's campaigns work. He is also co-coordinator of the Children’s Writers and Illustrators Group (CWIG).
Bestselling novelist, historian and playwright announced as keynote speaker for annual Society of Authors’ Awards ceremony on 20 June

The Society of Authors (SoA) has announced that The Languedoc Trilogy and The Joubert Family Chronicles author, Kate Mosse, will deliver the keynote speech at the 2024 Society of Authors’ Awards ceremony, which returns to Southwark Cathedral on 20 June.

Kate will join host and SoA Management Committee chair, Vanessa Fox O’Loughlin, to present the UK’s largest literary prizegiving event. The winners of 11 prizes will be celebrated, and a prize fund of over £140,000 awarded for works of fiction, non-fiction, poetry and illustration.

They will be joined by our panel of judges – esteemed authors in their own right –  to celebrate authors at all stages of their literary careers.

Kate Mosse CBE is a bestselling novelist, non-fiction author and playwright who has sold more than 10 million books in more than 40 languages. She is also a performer – her one-woman theatre show based on Warrior Queens & Quiet Revolutionaries toured the UK in 2023 and she is currently touring Women Who Resisted, a celebration of the forgotten women of World War II. A visiting Professor of Contemporary Fiction & Creative Writing at the University of Chichester, Kate is an Honorary Fellow of the SoA and a Trustee of the British Library. She joins the list of revered past keynote speakers, including Ben Okri, Stephen Fry, Lemn Sissay, Jackie Kay and Val McDermid.

Commenting on the awards, she said:

All literary awards celebrate outstanding, exceptional, imaginative, ground-breaking work. What I love about the SoA Awards is that they honour many authors, working in a whole range of disciplines and at different stages in their writing careers.  Now, more than ever, books matter – they offer us the chance to stand in other people’s shoes, to hear about lives other than our own, they encourage empathy and conversation. I know that when we gather together on 20th June, we will do so in the spirit of every voice mattering, every story being something to celebrate.

21 June 2024

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