Klaus Flugge, the publisher who launched the careers of some of our best-loved picture book illustrators, from Quentin Blake and Chris Riddell to David McKee, Tony Ross, Michael Foreman and Emma Chichester Clark, is launching his own book prize.
The Klaus Flugge Prize for the Most Exciting Newcomer to Picture Books will be the only award specifically to recognise a published picture book by a debut illustrator and it will have a prize of £5,000. The panel of judges will be announced in February when submissions will open. The shortlist will be announced at the end of April and the winner will be revealed in September 2016.
Klaus Flugge was born in Hamburg in 1934, apprenticed to a bookshop and sent to Book Trade School in Leipzig. He emigrated to America at the age of 23 as an East German refugee who spoke only German and Russian. After a variety of jobs, and two years as an American GI, he was offered a job working as a personal assistant to Lew Schwartz, owner of Abelard-Schuman publishing in New York. After only eighteen months Schwartz suggested he go to Europe to build up the very small list they had there and so he came to London in 1961. He launched Andersen Press – named after Hans Christian Andersen - in the autumn of 1976.
Now 82, Klaus Flugge is still at his desk at Andersen Press five days a week, in an office decorated with over 200 illustrated envelopes from the artists he works with.
