New author’s in contention for top award
Children’s author Jasbinder Bilan has been shortlisted for the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize 2020 for her debut novel Asha & the Spirit Bird.
The book was also awarded the Costa Children’s Book Award 2019 in January this year and has been nominated for the Carnegie Medal.
Jasbinder began writing her story when studying for an MA in Writing for Young People at Bath Spa University in 2014, after giving up teaching full-time, and the forest of Freshford proved a big inspiration.
Asha & the Spirit Bird is about a girl who goes on a journey through the Himalayas to find her missing father while guided by the spirit of her dead grandmother in the form of a Himalayan bird of prey.
“I was born close to the Himalayas, and it just felt like the story I wanted to write was about this little girl,” she said. “My grandmother was a wonderful storyteller and she would talk a lot about reincarnation, and how I shouldn’t worry because when she passed away she’d always be there.”
Jasbinder added: “When writing I’d go for walks in the forest around Freshford and you could imagine the woodland being in the Himalayas.”
The successful novel formed part of Jasbinder’s dissertation during her studies but she admits it has been no easy task.
“Writing Asha is probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” she said. “I stopped teaching full-time and, although I still kept going back to do supply, I concentrated mostly on the course.
“You don’t know, first of all, if you are going to be any good at it, and second, if you are going to be able to write a whole 55,000-word book.
“It was also a financial commitment from the family to not have two salaries, I’ve got children so luckily my husband supported me in that time.
“So I felt that I really had to put everything in it; writing it, finishing it, editing it, which took well over a year. Then I entered it for the Times/chicken House competition for unpublished and un-agented writers and I won the prize in 2017. That meant that I then got a deal with local publisher Chicken House. Jasbinder is releasing her follow-up novel Tamarind and the Star of Ishta in early August and you can find more about her at her website.