Caffè Nero has announced the category winners for the inaugural Nero Book Awards, which celebrate outstanding books and writers from the UK and Ireland across four categories: Children’s Fiction, Debut Fiction, Fiction and Non-Fiction.

Beth Lincoln has been named the winner of the £5,000 Children’s Fiction category for The Swifts, illustrated by Claire Powell. A rip-roaring murder mystery full of comedy and high jinks, the book is Lincoln’s first, and a direct result of her participation in Penguin Random House’s WriteNow scheme, which nurtures and publishes new writers from underrepresented communities.

As she reveals in the interview she gave Books for Keeps, Beth Lincoln feels passionately about integrating queer representation, with several characters in The Swifts identifying as queer. The Swifts was also inspired by her love for ‘weird old words’ like bumbershoot and zounderkite, a theme reflected in the book as the central family name their children according to a random page in their sacred dictionary.

The Swifts will now be judged against the winners of the Debut Fiction, Fiction and Non-Fiction categories, with the overall winner and recipient of The Nero Gold Prize, Book of the Year, to be announced at a ceremony in London on Thursday 14th March.

The judges in the children’s category were Urmi Merchant, co-founder and director of the children’s specialist bookshop and events space Pickled Pepper Books, in north London; Dave Rudden, author of the award-winning Knights of the Borrowed Dark series; and award-winning journalist, TV presenter and author, Nick Sheridan.

A final judging panel led by award-winning author Bernardine Evaristo will select the overall winner, who receives an additional £30,000.

Bernardine Evaristo said, ‘At a time when literature is under threat from the addictive distractions of social media and the internet, literary prizes not only celebrate individual writers and elevate careers, but draw attention to a beautiful art form that requires and rewards sustained concentration and engagement with words, other people’s lives, and the imagination. The Nero Book Awards are a major new prize. I’m looking forward to chairing the Nero Gold Prize, and selecting a book from the category winners that offers readers exceptional riches, one which we judges think deserves to be honoured as the overall book of the year.’

The Nero Book Awards celebrate the craft of great writing and the joy of reading, providing readers of all tastes with a combination of high-quality writing and readability. They are part of Caffè Nero’s programme to sponsor the arts and are run in partnership with Right to Dream, Brunel University London and The Booksellers Association.

The other three books shortlisted in the Children’s Category are:

Gwen and Art Are Not in Love by Lex Croucher (Bloomsbury YA)

Bitterthorn by Kat Dunn (Andersen Press)

Wild Song by Candy Gourlay (David Fickling)