Winner announced of the Kim Scott Walwyn Prize which recognises emerging talent among women in publishing

Press Release

American Editor, Anne Perry, who has worked in the UK publishing industry for less than four years, was last tonight announced as the winner of the Kim Scott Walwyn Prize 2014. She follows in the footsteps of her compatriot Miriam Robinson, who picked up last year's Prize.


The Prize, which celebrates the professional achievements and promise of women who have worked in publishing in the UK for up to seven years, was awarded at a ceremony packed with industry professionals at the Free Word Centre in Farringdon.


Victoria Barnsley, entrepreneur, businesswoman and former CEO and Publisher of HarperCollins UK and International, gave the keynote speech before Denise Johnstone-Burt, co-chair of the Kim Scott Walwyn Prize Committee and Judging Panel and Publisher at Walker Books, announced Anne as this year's winner. The Prize, worth £1000, is sponsored by the Society of Young Publishers and also includes a two-day course of Perry's choice, courtesy of the Publishing Training Centre.


Anne Perry, who has an MA in History, started her career in academia, copy-editing for The Journal of Juvenile Law and Politics at the University of California, as well as researching and teaching at the University of Chicago. In 2007 she made her move into trade publishing launching the review blog Pornokitsch with her husband Jared Shurin, which won them The British Fantasy Award for Best Non-Fiction 2013. From this base, they founded The Kitschies, the hugely successful UK genre Awards for speculative and fantasy fiction, which last year led them to be voted among the Hospital Club's top 10 most innovative and influential people working in publishing. The couple has also published their own anthologies under the imprint Jurassic London, the first of which, Pandemonium: Stories of the Apocalypse, was published in partnership with the Tate in November 2011 to coincide with the John Martin exhibit.


In 2012, Perry was hired by Hodder & Stoughton as an Assistant Editor, commissioning genre fiction, developing Hodder's backlist and digital genre publishing, and building Hodder's online profile amongst science fiction and fantasy readers with the Hodderscape blog. With a string of brilliant acquisitions under her belt, including Sarah Lotz's The Three, she was promoted to Editor in under a year. Described by Oliver Johnson, Associate Publisher at Hodder & Stoughton as 'one of the most talented and innovative young editors in the business', she was a unanimous choice as this year's winner.