Double honours for festival authors

Poet Jo Shapcott has won the 2010 Costa Book of the Year for her collection of poems Of Mutability.

Partly influenced by Shapcott’s experience of breast cancer, the collection movingly explores mortality and the nature of change: in the body and the natural world, and in shifting relationships between people.

Last year Jo appeared at the Book Festival alongside fellow poet Christopher Reid, winner of the Costa Book of the Year prize in 2009.

Festival favourite Candia McWilliam has been awarded this year’s South Bank Sky Arts Award literature prize for What to look for in a winter: a memoir about blindness.

The book, McWilliam’s first in over a decade, is a powerful and soul-searching account of her life including the two years of blindness during which she overcame writers’ block and rediscovered her voice.

Last year we were delighted to welcome Candia back to the Book Festival for an event which proved to be a deeply moving and inspirational experience for the hundreds of people who attended.

Read more about the Costa book of the year

The South Bank Sky Arts Award for Literature

Read a fascinating interview with Candia McWilliam in the Telegraph