This year to celebrate World Book Day, we invited superstar author Patrice Lawrence to spend three full days in school. This meant that she was able to talk to every class in Year 7, plus writers’ surgeries for aspiring writers in older years.
This was an extraordinary opportunity for our students. Patrice was awarded an MBE for literature in 2021 and was on this year’s prestigious Carnegie Medal shortlist with Needle. Eight Pieces of Silva was on our own school book award shortlist 2 years ago, and Elemental Detectives was on the Alexandra Palace Children’s Book Award shortlist last year. She’s won the YA Book Prize, the Crimefest YA Prize, the Woman and Home Bookclub Teen Drama Award, the Jhalak Prize for Children and Young People and the Waterstones Prize for Older Children’s Fiction. She is a prolific and passionate writer with a fizzing imagination on a mission to change the world.
She shared her own personal journey with us, talking about how growing up in a multiracial family had affected her. A natural rulebreaker, even Patrice had formed the impression that ‘people like her’ had no place in books and she initially only wrote about white characters. But Malorie Blackman was a huge influence and a role model, and now Patrice has written diverse casts of characters into contemporary fiction, meticulously researched historical stories, fantasy and even picture books for small children.
Her visit was inspiring for everyone and her generosity in sharing so much of herself with our students was a very powerful thing. This was an event which will certainly have lasting impact on those lucky enough to meet her.
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