Joseph Coelho is a multi-award-winning children’s author and playwright. His ‘Story told in Poems’, for age 12+, The Girl Who Became A Tree, was shortlisted for The 2021 Carnegie Medal and received a special mention from the Bologna Ragazzi Award 2021. His YA verse novel, The Boy Lost in the Maze, won the Yoto Carnegie Award for Writing 2024, has been chosen as an outstanding international book for The White Ravens collection 2023 and has also been nominated as an IBBY Honour Book for 2024. He has written plays for Little Angel Theatre, Polka Theatre and The Unicorn Theatre amongst others. He is two-time winner of the Indie Book Awards (2019 & 2022) with Picture Books If All The World Were... and My Beautiful Voice respectively (illustrated by Allison Colpoys). His poetry collection Werewolf Club Rules (illustrated by John O'Leary) won the 2015 CLIPPA Poetry Award. His plays for adults have received a special commendation from the Verity Bargate Award and been long-listed for the Bruntwood Playwriting Competition. He is Waterstones Children's Laureate 2022 - 2024.
