Ann Kelley (born 17 December 1941) is a British writer known best for children's books. The Burying Beetle made the Branford Boase Award shortlist and The Bower Bird was Costa Children's Book of the Year. [1] Several collections of her poetry and photographs were published before she wrote the novels that are the first two in a trilogy.
The Burying Beetle and The Bower Bird chronicle the story of Gussie, a 12-year-old girl who suffers from pulmonary atresia, a rare heart disease. Gussie is marked by her vivacity and thirst for knowledge, living every day to the full. The character is modelled on Ann's late son, Nathan Kelley, who suffered from the same congenital heart condition. When her son was born doctors said he would not survive the week and later said he would never walk. But Nathan defied predictions and lived to become an accomplished student. He had a passion for marine life and discovered two new fish cancers at the age of 16 (both registered with the U.S. Smithsonian Institution). Nathan went on to study biology and space sciences at Reading University and University College London. He died at age 24, a week after receiving a heart and lung transplant in December 1985. [2] [3]
Ann began writing poetry years after Nathan's death and published The Poetry Remedy in 1999 and then Paper Whites in 2001. Ann's first novel, The Burying Beetle, was published in 2005 by Luath Press Ltd and Because We Have Reached That Place (poetry) was published by Oversteps Books in 2006. [4]
Her work, The Bower Bird (also published by Luath) won the 2007 Costa Book Awards Children's Book of the Year.
Ann has said about her books:
'Gussie just came to me. I don't write for children, I write for a reader. It's a glimpse into the head of a child with a chronic disease, who has to find a way to live her short life to the full... Gussie isn't my son. She is an amalgamation of several people – my daughter, my grand daughter, my son and me – and she is mostly herself. My son knew that even with a successful transplant, in those days he would only have had a few more years. But he was so happy to have been given that chance. I think that is why I write about Gussie – to make people see the importance of being an organ donor. Please be an Organ Donor.'
Ann has won several prizes for her poetry and has run courses for aspiring poets from her home. She also conducts special study units in poetry writing for medical students and speaks about her work with patients at medical conferences. She is an honorary teaching fellow at Peninsula College of Medicine and Dentistry, University of Exeter and Plymouth. Her collected photographic works are Born and Bred (1988) and Sea Front (2005).
Ann Kelley also has a daughter, Caroline, and two grandchildren. She lives with her second husband in St Ives, Cornwall.
Olga was a regent of Kievan Rus' for her son Sviatoslav from 945 until 960. Following her baptism, Olga took the name Elenа. She is known for her subjugation of the Drevlians, a tribe that had killed her husband Igor of Kiev. Even though it was her grandson Vladimir who converted the entire nation to Christianity, because of her efforts to spread Christianity through Rus', Olga is venerated as a saint in the Eastern Orthodox Church with the epithet "Equal to the Apostles". Her feast day is 11 July.
Sylvia Plath was an American poet, novelist, and short story writer. She is credited with advancing the genre of confessional poetry and is best known for two of her published collections, The Colossus and Other Poems (1960) and Ariel (1965), as well as The Bell Jar, a semi-autobiographical novel published shortly before her suicide in 1963. The Collected Poems was published in 1981, which included previously unpublished works. For this collection Plath was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in Poetry in 1982, making her the fourth to receive this honour posthumously.
Anne Boleyn was Queen of England from 1533 to 1536, as the second wife of King Henry VIII. The circumstances of her marriage and of her execution by beheading for treason and other charges made her a key figure in the political and religious upheaval that marked the start of the English Reformation.
Ann Radcliffe was an English novelist and a pioneer of Gothic fiction. Her technique of explaining apparently supernatural elements in her novels has been credited with gaining respectability for Gothic fiction in the 1790s. Radcliffe was the most popular writer of her day and almost universally admired; contemporary critics called her the mighty enchantress and the Shakespeare of romance-writers, and her popularity continued through the 19th century. Interest has revived in the early 21st century, with the publication of three biographies.
Macmillan's Magazine
Dame Carol Ann Duffy [] is a Scottish poet and playwright. She is a professor of contemporary poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University, and was appointed Poet Laureate in May 2009, resigning in 2019. She was the first female poet, the first Scottish-born poet and the first openly lesbian poet to hold the Poet Laureate position.
Maya Angelou was an American memoirist, poet, and civil rights activist. She published seven autobiographies, three books of essays, several books of poetry, and is credited with a list of plays, movies, and television shows spanning over 50 years. She received dozens of awards and more than 50 honorary degrees. Angelou is best known for her series of seven autobiographies, which focus on her childhood and early adult experiences. The first, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969), tells of her life up to the age of 17 and brought her international recognition and acclaim.
Else Lasker-Schüler was a German-Jewish poet and playwright famous for her bohemian lifestyle in Berlin and her poetry. She was one of the few women affiliated with the Expressionist movement. Lasker-Schüler fled Nazi Germany and lived out the rest of her life in Jerusalem.
Ann Smith Franklin was an American colonial newspaper printer and publisher. She inherited the business from her husband, James Franklin, brother of Benjamin Franklin. She published the Mintunt, printed an almanac series. She was the country’s first female newspaper editor, the first woman to write an almanac, and the first woman inducted into the University of Rhode Island's Journalism Hall of Fame.
Rachel Bluwstein Sela was a Hebrew-language poet who immigrated to Palestine, then part of the Ottoman Empire, in 1909. She is known by her first name, Rachel, or as Rachel the Poetess. She is featured on Israel's 20 Shekel Banknote.
The Incredible Journey (1961), by Scottish author Sheila Burnford, is a children's book first published by Hodder & Stoughton, which tells the story of three pets as they travel 300 miles (480 km) through the Canadian wilderness searching for their beloved masters. It depicts the suffering and stress of an arduous journey, together with the unwavering loyalty and courage of the three animals. The story is set in the northwestern part of Ontario, which has many lakes, rivers, and widely dispersed small farms and towns.
Olga Nawoja Tokarczuk is a Polish writer, activist, and public intellectual. She is one of the most critically acclaimed and successful authors of her generation in Poland; in 2019, she was awarded the 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature as the first Polish female prose writer for "a narrative imagination that with encyclopedic passion represents the crossing of boundaries as a form of life". For her novel Flights, Tokarczuk has been awarded the 2018 Man Booker International Prize. Her works include Primeval and Other Times, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, and The Books of Jacob.
Anita Nair is an Indian novelist who writes her books in English. She is best known for her novels A Better Man, Mistress, and Lessons in Forgetting. She has also written poetry, essays, short stories, crime fiction, historical fiction, romance, and children's literature, including Muezza and Baby Jaan: Stories from the Quran.
Christine De Luca is a Scottish poet and writer from Shetland, who writes in both English and Shetland dialect. Her poetry has been translated into many languages. She was appointed Edinburgh's Makar, or poet laureate from 2014 to 2017. De Luca is a global advocate for the Shetland dialect and literature of the Northern Isles of Scotland.
Dilys Rose is a Scottish fiction writer and poet. Born in 1954 in Glasgow, Rose studied at Edinburgh University, where she taught creative writing from 2002 until 2017. She was Director of the MSc in Creative Writing by Online Learning from 2012 to 2017. She is currently a Royal Literary Fellow at the University of Glasgow. Her third novel Unspeakable was published by Freight Books in 2017.
Jane Taylor was an English poet and novelist best known for the lyrics of the widely known "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star". The sisters Jane and Ann Taylor and their authorship of various works have often been confused, partly because their early ones were published together. Ann Taylor's son, Josiah Gilbert, wrote in her biography, "Two little poems – 'My Mother,' and 'Twinkle, twinkle, little Star' – are perhaps more frequently quoted than any; the first, a lyric of life, was by Ann, the second, of nature, by Jane; and they illustrate this difference between the sisters."
Elizabeth Kirby (1823–1873) and Mary Kirby were successful English writers and illustrators of books for children and books on natural science. Mary Kirby is known particularly for leading the crowd-sourced Flora of Leicestershire and Elizabeth for her children's books. They both had a lifelong writing partnership that popularised science. Mary is thought to be one of the first British woman to publish a scientific study of the flora of her county in the nineteenth century.
Vera Bell or Vera Alberta or AlberthaBell was a Jamaican poet, short-story writer and playwright. Her 1948 poem "Ancestor on the Auction Block" has been anthologized several times although a 2005 review of The Oxford Book of Caribbean Verse says "some of the earlier poems survive only as amusing museum pieces, such as Vera Bell's "Ancestor on the Auction Block"". The poem is described by Laurence A. Breiner in his An Introduction to West Indian Poetry (1998) as "a poem whose crux is the poet's troubled relation to the poet's ancestral subject/object", and Breiner cites George Lamming as placing the poem "squarely at a liminal moment in the process of establishing contact with a previously objectified or fetishized Other".
Mary Ann Harris Gay was an American writer and poet from Decatur, Georgia, known for her Civil War memoir Life in Dixie During the War (1897). This described events in Atlanta during the war. Author Margaret Mitchell said this memoir inspired some of her passages in her novel Gone with the Wind (1936). Gay also published a book of poetry (1858), which she republished after the war to raise money to help support her mother and sister.
Bashabi Fraser is an Indian-born Scottish academic, editor, translator, and writer. She is a Professor Emerita of English and Creative Writing at Edinburgh Napier University and an Honorary Fellow at the Centre for South Asian Studies at the University of Edinburgh and an Honorary Fellow of the Association of Literary Studies (ALS), Scotland, and a former Royal Literary Fund Fellow. She has authored and edited 23 books, published several articles and chapters, both academic and creative and as a poet.
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