Sophia Bennett won first place is the second annual (London)
Times/Chicken House Children's Fiction Competition with her debut novel
Sequins, Secrets, and Silver Linings, which is the first title in a trilogy that combines her long-standing obsession with fashion with her keen desire to write for young readers. Her latest novel,
The Look, is the story of a girl who is spotted by a model agency at the same time as her sister is diagnosed with a serious illness.
For the
Guardian, Bennett named
her favorite writing about the fashion world. One book on the list:
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
Dodie Smith wrote this book in America, in self-imposed exile during the war. Despite the sun and safety of LA, her nostalgia for home seeps into every page. Cassandra and Rose 
Mortmain are growing up in straitened circumstances in a decaying English castle, surrounded by faded grandeur, never sure where the next meal is coming from. 17-year-old Cassandra writes about her family with pin-sharp, unsentimental wit. She sees the holes in their clothes and the make-do-and-mend desperation of their artistic stepmother, Topaz, as she tries to send them out into the world. We see sea-green, home-dyed silk tea dresses and outrageous, inherited beaver-lined coats. The sisters can't help being glamorous, in true, eccentric English style. Vogue would adore them.
Read about
another entry on the list.
--Marshal Zeringue