Dead Ends

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An electrifying new YA verse-novel by multi-award-winning and Carnegie nominated author and poet Ashley Hickson-Lovence. Perfect for fans of Jason Reynolds, Dean Atta and Manjeet Mann.

There are stories within these storeys . . .

Something is going down at Singer Court.

Something big.

It’s Saturday morning and fourteen-year-old Toby 'Mastermind' McKenzie and his younger brother Dré are forced to evacuate their high-rise tower block by armed officers.

Set over the course of a single day, this is the nail-bitingly thrilling and poetic tale of a bright young Black boy using the power of courage, friendship and unity to save his community.

Ashley Hickson-Lovence's debut YA verse-novel Wild East won the YA Diverse Book Award 2025, the Two Cities Book Award 2024, the Mal Peet Children’s Award 2024 and the East Anglian Book of the Year 2024. It was nominated for the Carnegie Medal for Writing 2025 and shortlisted and longlisted for multiple more prizes.

'Gritty, engrossing and deeply relatable' Nathanael Lessore

© Ashley Hickson-Lovence 2027 (P) Penguin Audio 2027

About Ashley Hickson-Lovence

Ashley Hickson-Lovence is a novelist, poet, literary critic, and Lecturer of Creative Writing. Wild East was his first multi-award-winning YA verse-novel, and was partly inspired by his time as a secondary school English teacher, his own move from London to Norwich, tutoring a group of asylum seekers at an Arvon retreat, and his love of British hip hop. Ashley has also written three adult novels: The 392, Your Show, which was longlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize and shortlisted for the East Anglian Book Awards, and About To Fall Apart. His poetry collection Why I Am Not a Bus Driver has been shortlisted for the Jhalak Poetry Prize and includes the poem 'Munster Road', highly commended for Best Single Poem at the Forward Prize. He holds a PhD in Creative and Critical Writing from the University of East Anglia and was nominated for the Black Excellence Award for Outstanding Contribution to Literature in 2023. His second YA verse-novel, Dead Ends, will publish in 2027.

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