Oliver Sykes

Oliver Sykes is an award-winning arts practitioner, children’s author/poet/performer and facilitator, with a passion for breaking down class barriers working across Theatre and Literature. In March 2025, he was awarded an MBE for Services to Access to the Arts for Underprivileged Young People.

Oliver’s two most recent publications include a chapter book, Saving Anwen (Collins Big Cat Read On Series) and his second children’s poetry collection, Diesel and Me (Collins Little Wandle Fluency Series). His first poetry collection, We Are Family: Six Kids and a Super-Dad (Otter-Barry Books) has been shortlisted for the 2025 CLiPPA Book Award and The Week Junior Book Awards 2025, hailed ‘fantastic’ by Schools Reading List and ‘excellent’ by BookTrust, and been endorsed by top-authors including Roger McGough, Phil Earle and Rashmi Sirdeshpande. His debut children’s novella, Alfie’s First Fight, won Best Illustrated Young Reader at the 2023 Children’s Literature Festivals’ Book Awards, and has been described as ‘compelling!’ by the late-great Alex Wheatle MBE.

When he is not writing, Oliver can usually be found performing his stories and poems, and facilitating creative writing workshops, at theatres, libraries and schools across the UK and beyond.