Inventing Ourselves by Sarah-Jayne Blakemore is named Hay Festival Book of the Year 2018 on the opening day of Hay Festival Winter Weekend begins today, kicking off a four-day global celebration of ideas with writers, thinkers and entertainers, alongside a rich strand of workshops, woodland walks and town festivities.
Winner of the 2018 Royal Society Insight Investment Science Book Prize 2018, Inventing Ourselves sees neuroscientist Sarah-Jayne Blakemore draw upon her cutting-edge research to explain the adolescent brain, showing how this time in all our lives is a period of vulnerability and enormous creativity that should be acknowledged, nurtured and celebrated.
Sarah-Jayne Blakemore is Professor in Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London. She has published more than 120 papers in scientific journals, and won multiple major awards for her research, including the British Psychological Society Spearman Medal 2006, the Turin Young Mind & Brain Prize 2013, the Royal Society Rosalind Franklin Award 2013 and the Klaus J. Jacobs Research Prize 2015. Inventing Ourselves is her first solo book and was launched at Hay Festival in May 2018.
Peter Florence, Director of Hay Festival, said: “A must-read for parents, teachers and teenagers (past and present) everywhere, Inventing Ourselves was one of the most talked-about books of Hay Festival 2018 – we’re pleased to celebrate it as our Book of the Year. As we open our arms to writers and readers from around the world to experience our Winter Weekend, it’s cheering to think how the world is full of great writers and thinkers primed to tackle the challenges of tomorrow.”
Watch her Hay Festival 2018 event again on Hay Player now here.
The news comes on the opening day of Hay Festival Winter Weekend with thousands expected to join the weekend of festivities over the next four days.
Explore the programme and book tickets here.