The Children's Wainwright Prize for Non-Fiction

Dara McAnulty is a naturalist, conservationist and activist from Northern Ireland. He’s received many awards for his conservation work, including from BBC Springwatch, The Daily Mirror and Birdwatch magazine. He’s written and presented numerous natural history programmes for BBC radio and television, and become an ambassador for the RSPCA, the iWill campaign and the Jane Goodall Institute. Dara is the youngest ever recipient of the RSPB medal for conservation. He is the author of three books for children, all illustrated by Barry Falls, Wild Child, A Wild Child’s Book of Birds and A Wild Child’s Guide to Nature at Night. He is currently reading Natural Sciences at Cambridge University and in the holidays lives with his family and Rosie the rescue-greyhound at the foot of the Mourne Mountains in County Down. His first book Diary of a Young Naturalist won the 2020 Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing, and Wild Child was shortlisted for the 2022 Wainwright Prize for Children’s Writing on Nature and Conservation. Dara won the Children’s Author category of Bookshop.org’s inaugural Indie Champions Awards. He was awarded the British Empire Medal in the 2023 New Year Honours list for services to the environment and people with autism spectrum disorder.

Barry Falls grew up in rural Northern Ireland, where he spent a lot of time drawing pictures and writing stories to go with them. When he got to art college in Belfast, he discovered that he might be able to do such a thing for a living, and was very excited. Since then, he’s been working as a commercial illustrator, and picking up multiple awards for the work he does for such clients as The New York Times, American Airlines, The Telegraph, Laurence King Publishing and many more besides. His work has appeared in magazines, books, exhibitions, on textiles and homeware, and in advertising campaigns around the world. His first book, It’s Your World Now! was published in 2019.