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Cindy Jefferies (born 1951) is a UK children's writer with sixteen books in print. She is best known for her series Fame School [1] (Usborne Publishing) about a group of children who are singing, playing and dancing their way to success in the music industry. This very English approach to the subject found a wide and enthusiastic audience, and has so far (2010) been translated into 15 languages. She also contributes to titles published for charity, including Lines in the Sand (2003, edited by Mary Hoffman) – a response to the allied invasion of Iraq, with all funds raised donated to UNICEF in Iraq.
Jefferies' first book, Sebastian's Quest, was a fantasy based on the ancient stone circle at Avebury in Wiltshire. It was published in 2000 by the discoverer of J. K. Rowling, Barry Cunningham. She has also collaborated with her son Sebastian Goffe on the series "Stadium School" for A & C Black. The four books in this series follow the exploits of Roddy Jones, a young, aspiring footballer, who wins a place at a specialist, football school. The series was chosen by the National Literacy Trust in 2009 for their Reading the Game initiative.
Jefferies was born in 1951 in Cirencester, Gloucestershire, and after some years in Scotland she returned to the county, where she still lives and continues to write for children.
She is a member of The Society of Authors, the Scattered Authors Society, the Federation of Children's Book Groups, and is a life member of the Friends of the Cheltenham Festival of Literature. She is agented by Patricia White of Rogers Coleridge and White.
Elizabeth de Beauchamp Goudge FRSL was an English writer of fiction and children's books. She won the Carnegie Medal for British children's books in 1946 for The Little White Horse. Goudge was long a popular author in the UK and the US and regained attention decades later. In 1993 her book The Rosemary Tree was plagiarised by Indrani Aikath-Gyaltsen; the "new" novel set in India was warmly reviewed in The New York Times and The Washington Post before its source was discovered. In 2001 or 2002 J. K. Rowling identified The Little White Horse as one of her favourite books and one of few with a direct influence on the Harry Potter series.
Judy Blundell, pseudonym Jude Watson, is an American author of books for middle grade, young adult, and adult readers. She won the annual National Book Award for Young People's Literature in 2008 for the young adult novel What I Saw and How I Lied, published under her real name by Scholastic Books.
Nina Bawden CBE, FRSL, JP was an English novelist and children's writer. She was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1987 and the Lost Man Booker Prize in 2010. She is one of very few who have both served as a Booker judge and made a Booker shortlist as an author. She was a recipient of the Golden PEN Award.
Jamila Gavin is a British writer born in Mussoorie in the United Provinces of India, in the present-day state of Uttarakhand in the Western Himalayas. She is known mainly for children's books, including several with Indian contexts. Jamila gavin is an author of children' book.
Elizabeth Wright Enright Gillham was an American writer of children's books, an illustrator, writer of short stories for adults, literary critic and teacher of creative writing. Perhaps best known as the Newbery Medal-winning author of Thimble Summer (1938) and the Newbery runner-up Gone-Away Lake (1957), she also wrote the popular Melendy quartet. A Newbery Medal laureate and a multiple winner of the O. Henry Award, her short stories and articles for adults appeared in many popular magazines and have been reprinted in anthologies and textbooks.
Susanne Julia Gervay is an Australian author. Her younger fiction in the I Am Jack series are rites-of-passage books focusing on school bullying reaching adults and children. The first instalment has been adapted into a play by the award-winning Monkey Baa Theatre for Young People. I Am Jack is the first of four books including Super Jack, Always Jack and Being Jack. Her powerful realistic young adult literature includes Butterflies, The Cave and That's Why I Wrote This Song which is a collaborative work with her teenage daughter Tory who wrote and sings the songs that are part of the book and downloadable from her website.
Michelle Ferguson-Cohen is a children's book author, illustrator, and publisher. Her father is a career military officer and Vietnam veteran. As a military brat herself, many of the picture books she develops are written for and feature military brats.
Mary Lassiter Hoffman is a British writer and critic. She has had over 90 books published whose audiences range from children to adults. One of her best known works is the children's book Amazing Grace, which was a New York Times best-seller at 1.5 million copies and a finalist for the 1991 Kate Greenaway Medal. From 2002 to 2012, she wrote the teen fiction series Stravaganza.
Berlie Doherty is an English novelist, poet, playwright and screenwriter. She is best known for children's books, for which she has twice won the Carnegie Medal. She has also written novels for adults, plays for theatre and radio, television series and libretti for children's opera.
Nader Ebrahimi was an Iranian writer, screenwriter, photographer, director, actor, songwriter, and an outstanding contemporary novelist.
Joan Margaret Phipson AM (1912–2003) was an Australian children's writer. She lived on a farm in the Central Tablelands of New South Wales and many of her books evoke the stress and satisfaction of living in the Australian countryside, floods, bushfires, drought and all. Two of her novels, Good Luck to the Rider and The Family Conspiracy, won the Australian Children's Book of the Year Award.
Kathryn White is a British children's book author based in Bristol.
Thirteen Reasons Why is a young adult novel written by Jay Asher in 2007, that follows the story of Hannah Baker, a high school freshman, and the thirteen reasons why she commits suicide. Following her death, Hannah leaves behind a series of 7 double-sided cassette tapes detailing the 13 specific people and events that she blames for her demise. Two weeks after her death these cassette tapes are mailed out with directions to pass the tapes on to the next person on the tape. Hannah's life story is conveyed through these tapes, which are narrated by Hannah herself, and through the point of view of Clay, her classmate and the ninth person to receive the tapes. The inspiration behind the main character, Hannah Baker, comes from author Jay Asher's close relative who attempted suicide.
Connie Ann Kirk is an American author. Her books cover a range of subjects including concise literary biographies for students, bio-critical literary studies, and references. She has also written a fiction picture book for children. Her articles, both in print and online, address topics in literature, poetry, popular culture, history, education, art, television, science, sports, and film.
J. C. Burke is an Australian author, currently living in Sydney.
Gail Sidonie Sobat is a Canadian writer, educator, singer and performer. She is the founder and coordinator of YouthWrite, a writing camp for children, a non-profit and charitable society. Her poetry and fiction, for adults and young adults, are known for her controversial themes. For 2015, Sobat was one of two writers in residence with the Metro Edmonton Federation of Libraries. She is also the founder of the Spoken Word Youth Choir in Edmonton.
Robin Lorraine LaFevers is an American children's book writer from California.
Doris Gates was one of America's first writers of realistic children's fiction. Her novel Blue Willow, about the experiences of Janey Larkin, the ten-year-old daughter of a migrant farm worker in 1930s California, is a Newbery Honor book and Lewis Carroll Shelf Award winner. A librarian in Fresno, California, Gates lived and worked among the people described in her novels. She is also known for her collections of Greek mythology.
Dinah Mary Jefferies is a British novelist, and a short-story and article writer.
Isabella Tree, Lady Burrell is a British author and travel journalist. She is author of the Richard Jefferies Society Literature Award-winning book Wilding: the return of nature to a British farm that describes the creation of Knepp Wildland, the first large-scale rewilding project in lowland England. The 3,500 acres (1,400 ha) wildland project was created in the grounds of Knepp Castle, the ancestral home of her husband, Sir Charles Burrell, a landowner and conservationist.