Catherine Johnson | |
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 Johnson in 2023 | |
| Born | Sylvia Hope Ruxton 1962 (age 61–62) London, England |
| Occupation | Novelist and screenwriter |
| Education | St Martin's School of Art |
| Website | |
| www | |
Catherine Johnson FRSL (born 1962) is a British author and screenwriter. She has written several young adult novels and co-wrote the screenplay for the 2004 drama film Bullet Boy (directed by and co-written with Saul Dibb). [1]
Catherine Johnson was born in London, England, in 1962. Her father was Jamaican and her mother was Welsh. Johnson grew up in North London and attended Tetherdown Primary School. Later she studied film at St Martin's School of Art, before turning to writing. [2] [3]
Her first book, The Last Welsh Summer, was published by Welsh publisher Pont Books in 1993. She has since written and published 20 novels, including two for children about pioneering Arctic explorer Matthew Henson. [4] In 1999, her book Landlocked was honoured as an International Youth Library White Raven book. [5] Other accolades include the 2014 Young Quills Award for best historical fiction for over-12s for her 2013 book Sawbones, which was also shortlisted for the Rotherham Book Award, the Salford Children's Book Prize and the Hoo Kids Book Award. [6] Johnson won the 2019 Little Rebels Award for Radical Children's Fiction for her 2018 book Freedom. [7] [8]
Johnson has been a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at the London Institute, a Writer in Residence at Holloway Prison and a Reader in Residence at the Royal Festival Hall's Imagine Children's Literature Festival. [2] She has served as a judge for the Jhalak Prize, first awarded in 2017. [9] [10]
In 2019, she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. [11] [12] [13]
Johnson is a contributor to the 2019 anthology New Daughters of Africa , edited by Margaret Busby. [14] [15]
Malorie Blackman is a British writer who held the position of Children's Laureate from 2013 to 2015. She primarily writes literature and television drama for children and young adults. She has used science fiction to explore social and ethical issues, for example, her Noughts and Crosses series uses the setting of a fictional alternative Britain to explore racism. Blackman has been the recipient of many honours for her work, including the 2022 PEN Pinter Prize.
Robert Macfarlane is a British writer and Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge.
Kevin John William Crossley-Holland is an English translator, children's author and poet. His best known work is probably the Arthur trilogy (2000–2003), for which he won the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize and other recognition.
Catherine Fisher is a poet and novelist for children and Young Adults. Best known for her internationally bestselling novel Incarceron and its sequel, Sapphique, she has published over 40 novels and 5 volumes of poetry. She has worked as an archaeologist, and as a school and university teacher, is an experienced broadcaster and adjudicator and has taught at the Arvon Foundation and Ty Newydd Writers' Centres. She lives in Wales, UK.
The Blue Peter Book Awards were a set of literary awards for children's books conferred by the BBC television programme Blue Peter. They were inaugurated in 2000 for books published in 1999 and 2000. The awards were managed by reading charity, BookTrust, from 2006 until the final award in 2022. From 2013 until the final award, there were two award categories: Best Story and Best Book with Facts.
The Tir na n-Og Awards are a set of annual children's literary awards in Wales from 1976. They are presented by the Books Council of Wales to the best books published during the preceding calendar year in each of three awards categories, one English-language and two Welsh-language. Their purpose is "[to raise] the standard of children's and young people's books and to encourage the buying and reading of good books." There is no restriction to fiction or prose. Each prize is £1,000.
Pete Johnson is a British children's writer with more than fifty books to his name. Inspired by the author, Dodie Smith – a fan letter led to a correspondence for over twenty years – his earlier books were for teenagers. But, his first breakout hit was The Ghost Dog in 1996; an eerie tale about the power of imagination which won both the Stockton Children's Book of the Year Award and The Young Telegraph Book of the Year. This book is still widely used in schools. Other horror stories followed including, The Creeper (2001) which also won The Stockton Children's Book of the Year Award and The Vampire Blog (2010) which won The Brilliant Book Award.
Gomer Press is a family printing company based in Llandysul, west Wales. It was the largest publishing house in Wales.
Adam Samuel James Foulds FRSL is a British novelist and poet.
Mike Jenkins is a Welsh poet and fiction writer in English. He is also the father of the Plaid Cymru politician Bethan Sayed and of the journalist Ciaran Jenkins.
Aminatta Forna is a British writer of Scottish and Sierra Leonean ancestry. Her first book was a memoir, The Devil That Danced on the Water: A Daughter's Quest (2002). Since then she has written four novels: Ancestor Stones (2006), The Memory of Love (2010), The Hired Man (2013) and Happiness (2018). In 2021 she published a collection of essays, The Window Seat: Notes from a Life in Motion. (2021), which was a new genre for her.
Anthony John McGowan is an English author of books for children, teenagers and adults. He is the winner of the 2020 CILIP Carnegie Medal for Lark.
Kiran Ann Millwood Hargrave FRSL is a British poet, playwright and novelist. In 2023, she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi is a Ugandan-British novelist and short story writer. Her doctoral novel, The Kintu Saga, was shortlisted and won the Kwani? Manuscript Project in 2013. It was published by Kwani Trust in 2014 under the title Kintu. Her short story collection, Manchester Happened, was published in 2019. She was shortlisted for the 2014 Commonwealth Short Story Prize for her story "Let's Tell This Story Properly", and emerged Regional Winner, Africa region. She was the Overall Winner of the 2014 Commonwealth Short Story Prize. She was longlisted for the 2014 Etisalat Prize for Literature. She is a lecturer in Creative Writing at Lancaster University. In 2018, she was awarded a Windham-Campbell Prize in the fiction category. In 2021, her novel The First Woman won the Jhalak Prize.
Patrice Lawrence MBE, FRSL is a British writer and journalist, who has published fiction both for adults and children. Her writing has won awards including the Waterstones Children's Book Prize for Older Children and The Bookseller YA Book Prize. In 2021, she won the Jhalak Prize's inaugural children's and young adult category for her book Eight Pieces of Silva (2020).
The Jhalak Prize for Book of the Year by a Writer of Colour is an annual literary prize awarded to British or British-resident BAME writers. £1,000 is awarded to the sole winner.
Onjali Qatara Raúf is a British author and the founder of the two NGOs: Making Herstory, a woman's rights organisation tackling the abuse and trafficking of women and girls in the UK; and O's Refugee Aid Team, which raises awareness and funds to support refugee frontline aid organisations.
Nikesh ShuklaFRSL is a British author and screenwriter. His writing focuses on race, racism, identity, and immigration. He is the editor of the 2016 collection of essays The Good Immigrant, which features contributions from Riz Ahmed, Musa Okwonga, Bim Adewunmi, and Reni Eddo-Lodge, among others. With Chimène Suleyman, he co-edited the 2019 follow-up collection called The Good Immigrant: 26 Writers Reflect On America.
Preti Taneja FRSL is a British writer, screenwriter and educator. She is currently professor of world literature and creative writing at Newcastle University. Her first novel, We That Are Young, won the Desmond Elliott Prize and was shortlisted for several awards, including the Republic of Consciousness Prize, the Prix Jan Michalski, and the Shakti Bhatt Prize. In 2005, a film she co-wrote was shortlisted for the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Taneja's second book, Aftermath, is an account of the 2019 London Bridge terror attack, and describes her knowledge of the victims, as well as her experience having previously taught the perpetrator of the attacks in a prison education programme. It won the Gordon Burn Prize for 2022.
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