Deborah Ellis | |
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 Deborah Ellis in Renaissance, Florida, 2011. | |
| Born | August 7, 1960 Cochrane, Ontario, Canada |
| Occupation | Writer, activist and feminist. |
| Nationality | Canadian |
| Notable works |
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Deborah Ellis CM OOnt (born August 7, 1960) is a Canadian fiction writer and activist. Her themes are often concerned with the sufferings of persecuted children in the Third World.
Born in Cochrane Ontario, Ellis and her family moved several times during her childhood due to her parent's work. Ellis started writing when she was 11 or 12 years old. [1]
Much of her work as a writer has been inspired by her travels and conversations with people from around the world and their stories. She has held many jobs advocating for the peace movement and the anti-war movement.
She travelled to Pakistan in 1997 to interview refugees at an Afghan refugee camp. [2] From these interviews, she wrote The Breadwinner series, which includes The Breadwinner (2001), a book about a girl named Parvana, [3] [4] Parvana's Journey (2002), its sequel, [5] Mud City (2003), about Shauzia, Parvana's best friend, [6] and My Name is Parvana (2011), the fourth book in the series. While The Breadwinner was inspired by an interview with a mother and a girl who disguised herself as a boy in a refugee camp, [7] the subsequent books in the series were more imaginative explorations of how children would survive.
In 1999, her novel Looking for X was published. It follows a young girl in her day-to-day life in a poor area of Toronto [8] and it received the Governor General's Award for English-language children's literature in 2000. [9]
One of her best known works is the 2004 book The Heaven Shop , which tells of a family of orphans in Malawi who are struggling with sudden displacement as a result of the HIV/AIDS impact. The novel was written to dispel myths about HIV/AIDS and celebrate the courage of child sufferers. [10]
In 2006, she wrote the best-seller, I Am a Taxi, which tells the story of a Bolivian boy named Diego whose family was accused of smuggling coca paste, which is used to produce cocaine. After an accident causes Diego's family to owe money to the prison in which they are incarcerated in, the boy must earn them money. He ends up in the coca "pits" where the coca leaves are made into coca paste, and the story follows his adventures from there. [11] [12] The sequel, Sacred Leaf, is about Diego's time with the Ricardos (a family who helped Diego) and a giant coca leaf protest. [13]
In 2007, with Eric Walters, Ellis wrote Bifocal, a novel about racism and terrorists in Canada. [14]
In 2008, Ellis published Lunch with Lenin and Other Stories, a collection of short stories that explores the lives of children who have been affected directly, or indirectly, by drugs. The stories are set against backdrops as diverse as the remote north of Canada to Moscow's Red Square to an opium farm in Afghanistan. [15] [16]
In 2014, she published Moon at Nine, a YA novel based on the true story of two teenage girls who are arrested and thrown in prison in Iran, a country where homosexuality is punishable by death.
The fifth book in Ellis's Breadwinner series, One More Mountain was published by Groundwood books in 2022, takes up Parvana's story as the Americans are leaving Afghanistan and the Taliban are regaining control in Kabul.
In 2006, Ellis was named to the Order of Ontario. [17]
Ellis is the recipient of the Governor General's Award, [9] the Jane Addams Children's Book Award, [18] the Vicky Metcalf Award for a body of work, [19] an ALA Notable, [20] and the Children's Africana Book Award Honor Book for Older Readers. [21]
In December 2016, Ellis was named a Member of the Order of Canada. [22]
Ellis is a philanthropist, donating almost all of her royalties on her books to such organizations as "Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan" and UNICEF. [23] Due to this work, she has been threatened by the Taliban. [24]
These are some of the works of Deborah Ellis: [25]
Carol Ann Shields was an American-born Canadian novelist and short story writer. She is best known for her 1993 novel The Stone Diaries, which won the U.S. Pulitzer Prize for Fiction as well as the Governor General's Award in Canada.
Sandra Louise Birdsell, CM is a Canadian novelist and short story writer of Métis and Mennonite heritage from Morris, Manitoba.
Miriam Toews is a Canadian writer and author of nine books, including A Complicated Kindness (2004), All My Puny Sorrows (2014), and Women Talking (2018). She has won a number of literary prizes including the Governor General's Award for Fiction and the Writers' Trust Engel/Findley Award for her body of work. Toews is also a three-time finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and a two-time winner of the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize.
Paulette Bourgeois, is a Canadian writer best known for creating Franklin the Turtle, the character who appears in picture books illustrated by Toronto native Brenda Clark. The books have sold more than 60 million copies worldwide and have been translated into 38 languages. An animated television series, merchandise, DVDs and full-length films are based on the character.
Stevie Cameron,, is a Canadian investigative journalist and author.
Tim Wynne-Jones, is an English–Canadian author of children's literature, including picture books and novels for children and young adults, novels for adults, radio dramas, songs for the CBC/Jim Henson production Fraggle Rock, as well as a children's musical and an opera libretto.
The Breadwinner, also known as Parvana, is a children's novel by Deborah Ellis, first published in 2001. As of October 2013, the English-language edition of the book has had a run of 39 editions. The title of the book refers to the role of the protagonist, 11-year-old Parvana, who is forced by circumstances to be the breadwinner for her family in a war-torn Taliban-era in Afghanistan.
Debbie Nathan is an American feminist journalist and writer, with a focus on cultural and criminal justice issues concerning abuse of children, particularly accusations of satanic ritual abuse in schools and child care institutions. She also writes about immigration, focusing on women and on dynamics between immigration and sexuality. Nathan's writing has won a number of awards. She appears in the 2003 Oscar-nominated film Capturing the Friedmans. She has been affiliated with the National Center for Reason and Justice, which, among other things, provides support to persons who may have been wrongly accused of sexual abuse.
Anita Daher is an author, screenwriter, producer, show host and actor based in Winnipeg, Manitoba. She has worked in book publishing since 1995 and has published in print, audio and e-book format in Canada, the United States, and Europe. She is also an actor on stage and screen. In 2020, she began to produce and host an author interview series called Made in Manitoba: Stories from Home airing on Shaw Winnipeg's community access channel, as well as the YouTube Channel, Made in Manitoba Book TV.
Bradley McGogg, the Very Fine Frog is a book by Canadian children's book author Tim Beiser, illustrated by Canadian painter Rachel Berman. It was published by Tundra Books in March 2009.
Sarah Ellis is a Canadian children's writer and librarian. She has been a librarian in Toronto and Vancouver. She has also written reviews for Quill and Quire. She taught writing at the Vermont College of Fine Arts and is a masthead reviewer for The Horn Book.
Nora Twomey is an Irish animator, director, screenwriter, producer and voice actress. She is best known as the co-founder of Cartoon Saloon, alongside Tomm Moore and Paul Young, an animation studio and production company, based in Kilkenny City, Ireland. She is best known for co-directing The Secret of Kells and directing The Breadwinner. Her work on both films earned Academy Award nominations for Best Animated Feature.
Bacha posh is an Afghan tradition in which some families without sons will pick a daughter to live and behave as a boy. This enables the child to behave more freely: attending school, escorting her sisters in public, and working.
Dora Dueck is a Canadian writer. She is the author of three novels, a collection of short fiction, and a collection of essays and memoir. Her second novel, This Hidden Thing, was shortlisted for the Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction and won the McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award at the 2011 Manitoba Book Awards. What You Get at Home, a collection of short stories, was shortlisted for the Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction and the Carol Shields Winnipeg Award at the 2013 Manitoba Book Awards. It won the High Plains Book Award for Short Stories. The Malahat Review, a Canadian literary magazine, awarded its 2014 Novella Prize to her story "Mask". All That Belongs, her third novel, was published in 2019. Her stories and articles have appeared in a variety of journals and on the CBC.
The Stamp Collector is a children's picture book by Jennifer Lanthier and François Thisdale. It was published in 2012 by Fitzhenry & Whiteside. A French language edition, Le Collectionneur de Timbres, was released in October, 2013. The theme of the book is freedom of expression.
Alice Kuipers is a British-born author living in Saskatchewan, Canada who is best known for her young adult novels. Life on the Refrigerator Door won the Grand Prix de Viarmes, the Livrentête Prize, the Redbridge Teenage Book Award in 2008 and the Saskatchewan First Book Award in 2007, was narrated as an audio book by Amanda Seyfried and Dana Delany, and has been adapted for theater in England, France and Japan. 40 Things I Want To Tell You won a Saskatchewan Book Award for Young Adult Literature in 2013. The Worst Thing She Ever Did won the Arthur Ellis Award for Best Juvenile/YA Crime Book in 2011.
Looking for X is a children's novel written for ages 9–12 by Deborah Ellis. This book is about an eleven-year-old girl named Khyber that lives in a poorer area, Regent Park, in Toronto, Ontario. She lives there with her mother and her twin brothers who are both autistic. One day Khyber shows up at school and is accused of breaking the windows of her teacher's classroom. When she is expelled she sets off in the middle of the night to find her friend X, a homeless woman who lives in the park across the street from her house. She is the only one that can clear Khyber's name. She spends all night wandering the streets in search of X and has the adventure of a lifetime.
Shelly Sanders is a Canadian journalist and novelist writing in English.
The Breadwinner is a 2017 animated drama film from Irish animation studio Cartoon Saloon directed by Nora Twomey. Based on the best-selling novel by Deborah Ellis, the film was an international co-production among Canada, the Republic of Ireland and Luxembourg, and received a limited release on 17 November 2017.
Carrie Mac is a Canadian author of more than a dozen novels for Young Adults, both contemporary and speculative. Her latest work is the literary novel, LAST WINTER, due out from Random House Canada in early 2023. She also writes literary short fiction, and creative non-fiction. Some of her accolades include a CBC Creative Nonfiction Prize, the Sheila A. Egoff Children's Literature Prize, and the Arthur Ellis Award, as well as various other awards and recognitions.
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