Howe’s ‘exceptional’ Foretokens took the main £10,000 award, while Nur Turkmani, Tara Bergin and Biff Smith swept up the remaining categories

Sarah Howe has won the Forward prize for best collection, one of the UK’s most prestigious poetry awards, for Foretokens, a collection that explores new parenthood, the death of her father and her mother’s early life in Hong Kong.

Howe was announced as the winner during a ceremony hosted by Joelle Taylor at London’s Southbank Centre on Saturday evening, and will receive £10,000.

Foretokens by Sarah Howe (Vintage Publishing, £12.99). To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.

Move over Oasis – 6,000 people tried to buy 220 tickets to a masquerade ball to celebrate the release of A Court of Splintered Harmony, while specialist bookshops catering for the genre report huge sales

When The Spicy Librarian, a romance bookshop in Leamington Spa, announced a masquerade ball to celebrate the new Sarah J Maas novel, 6,000 people tried to buy 220 tickets. “We sold out within 13 minutes,” says the shop’s co-founder Ali Maynard James. “As soon as tickets went on sale, our website crashed”.

The shop was one of many across the UK marking the release of A Court of Splintered Harmony, the first instalment of Maas’s A Court of Thorns and Roses series in more than five years. On Monday night, bookshops threw parties and opened past midnight – and The Spicy Librarian hired a stately home to mark the occasion.