Golden Egg Academy - The best editors and writing course for children's writers.

Mother Goose welcomes you to the nest...

Courses for writers of children’s fiction, run by award-winning editor Imogen Cooper and her team of experienced editors and industry professionals

Supporting diverse writers through the Quarto Translations/Golden Egg Academy Diversity Award

Courses for writers of picture books, run by Barefoot Books
co-founder Tessa Strickland and experienced industry editor, Josephine Collins

A foot in the door

Golden Egg offers industry-led creative writing courses including editorial support, workshops and online classes, together with the chance to join a community of writers and network with industry contacts.

Through our well-connected and highly experienced editors, we have strong links, especially in the UK and USA, with children’s literary agents and publishing houses including Chicken House, Andersen Press, Scholastic, Guppy Books, David Fickling Books, Firefly Press, Little Tiger Press, Stripes, Simon & Schuster, Nosy Crow, Farshore, Penguin, Hot Key Books, The Shaw Agency, Skylark Literary, Ben Illis Agency, Andrew Nurnberg Associates, Morgan Green Creatives and Peters, Fraser and Dunlop.

The Golden Egg Award

At Golden Egg we pride ourselves on our ethical approach to business and to publishing. Our aim always is to encourage diversity in books and publishing in general. Previously the Quarto Translations/Golden Egg Academy Diversity Award, The Golden Egg Award is aimed at encouraging diverse writers and diverse stories, as well as providing opportunities for writers who would not normally be able to benefit from the expertise at GEA. The award will be for writers of talent whose work is likely to reach publishable standard, for the ultimate aim is to enable children to see themselves in the literature they are reading and meet published writers that they might wish to emulate.

The Golden Egg Academy Award, with its offer of a writer development course and a First Look deal with Chicken House, is a prime example of an opportunity that gives aspiring writers of colour of children’s fiction a supported path to publication.

Heather Marks, Award Winner

Click here to learn more about the award

First Look Deal

The only writing academy to offer industry first-look deals!

Extraordinary, standout novels will be selected from those studying on our selective creative writing courses. Through intensive one2one editorial with one of our Industry Specialists on Golden Egg Mentoring, these novels are prepared for submission via our exclusive First Look deals.

Picture book and fiction manuscripts selected for our First Look deals are guaranteed to receive feedback from the agents and publishers concerned whether or not a contract is offered. Writers are not obliged to take the deal offered to them.

Whether or not a deal is made, our submissions team will help candidates find agents and publishers.

Our First Look deals are with Chicken House Books, Andersen Press and Peters, Fraser and Dunlop.