Keren David
Keren David started in journalism as a teenage messenger girl, spending a year running errands and making coffee before turning down a place at university to become an apprentice reporter. She has worked as a news reporter, a feature writer and an editor on local and national newspapers in London and Scotland. Keren lived in Amsterdam from 1999 to 2007 and was Editor-in-Chief for a photo-journalism agency.
Keren returned to north London in 2007, with her husband and two children. She wrote her compelling debut YA novel, When I Was Joe, in 2008 after taking an evening course in writing for children at City, University of London.
When I Was Joe won five regional awards, voted for by teenage readers, was nominated for the Carnegie Medal and the William Morris award, shortlisted for the Branford Boase award, the UKLA award and highly commended for the Teenage Booktrust Prize. It was listed as a White Raven 2011 (awarded by the International Youth Library to books which deserve worldwide attention). When I Was Joe is the first in a trilogy, along with Almost True and Another Life.
Keren’s standalone novel Lia’s Guide to Winning the Lottery was nominated for the Carnegie Medal. Salvage, Keren’s third standalone, was shortlisted for the 2015 Bookseller YA Book Prize, The Romantic Novel of the Year award, was picked as one of the Telegraph’s 40 best YA books of 2014 and was nominated for the Carnegie Medal. In France, as Te Retrouver (Hugo et Cie) it was nominated for Les Incorruptibles prize.
This is Not a Love Story (Atom, 2015) was long-listed for the UKLA award and nominated for the Carnegie Medal. Cuckoo (Atom, 2016) was nominated for the 2017 Carnegie Medal. The Spanish translation of Stranger (Fondo de Cultura Economica) won the Banco del Libro YA Novel in Translation Award in 2021 and the Italian version (Giunti) was shortlisted for the Andersen Prize.
Her ground-breaking novel about contemporary antisemitism What We’re Scared Of, was published by Scholastic in January 2021. The Italian version (Giuntina) was shortlisted for the Strega Prize 2022.
