Patrice Lawrence is an award-winning writer. Her debut YA novel, Orangeboy (Hachette), won the Bookseller YA Book Prize and the Waterstones Prize for Older Children's Fiction and was shortlisted for the Costa Children's Book Award. Her subsequent novels have been much acclaimed and frequent visitors to prize lists including the Jhalak Children’s and Young Adult Prize and the YA Book Prize. Needle (Barrington Stoke) was shortlisted for the Yoto Carnegie Medal for Writing and winner of the 2023 Little Rebels Award. Her most recent book, People Like Stars (Scholastic) was shortlisted for the Nero Book Awards.

Patrice writes for children of all ages and her work often centres on the experiences of young people today, encompassing inclusivity, representing diverse family structures and spanning various genres. In 2021 Patrice was awarded an MBE for Services to Literature and in 2023 she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Patrice was born in Brighton, raised in an Italian-Trinidadian family in mid-Sussex, and now lives on the South Coast.