Nina Bawden | |
---|---|
![]() Bawden in 2003 | |
Born | Ilford, Essex, England | 19 January 1925
Died | 22 August 2012 87) North London, England | (aged
Occupation | Writer |
Nationality | English |
Period | 1953–2004 |
Genre | Novels, Children's literature |
Spouse | Harry Bawden (m. 1946;div. 1954) |
Children | 3 |
Nina Mary Bawden CBE, FRSL, JP (19 January 1925 – 22 August 2012) 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 was a recipient of the Golden PEN Award.
Nina Bawden was born in 1925 in Ilford, Essex, England as Nina Mary Mabey. [1] She lived in Ilford in "a rather nasty housing estate that [her] mother despised". [2] Her mother was a teacher and her father a member of the Royal Marines. She was evacuated during World War II to Aberdare, Wales, at the age of fourteen. She spent school holidays at a farm in Shropshire with her mother and brothers.
She attended Ilford County High School for Girls; Somerville College (B.A. 1946, M.A. 1951), Oxford, where she gained a degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics.
From 1946 to 1954 Bawden was married to Harry Bawden. They had two sons, Nicholas (who took his own life in 1981) [3] and Robert. In 1954 she married Austen Kark, a reporter who eventually became managing director of the BBC World Service. They had a daughter, Perdita, who died in March 2012. [4] She also had two stepdaughters: Cathy, who lives in New Zealand, and Teresa, who lives in London. In 2002 Bawden was badly injured in the Potters Bar rail crash, in which her husband Austen Kark was killed. Her testimony about the crash, and her exploration of the management and maintenance mistakes that caused it, became a major part of David Hare's play The Permanent Way , in which she appeared as a character.
Bawden died at her home in north London on 22 August 2012. [3] [5]
Some of Bawden's 55 books have been dramatised by BBC Children's television. Many have been published in translation. [6]
Her novels include On the Run (1964), The Witch's Daughter (1966), The Birds on the Trees (1970), Carrie's War (1973), and The Peppermint Pig (1975). For the latter she won the 1976 Guardian Children's Fiction Prize, a once-in-a-lifetime book award judged by a panel of British children's writers. [7] Carrie's War won the 1993 Phoenix Award from the Children's Literature Association as the best English-language children's book that did not win a major contemporary award when it was originally published twenty years earlier. It is named for the mythical bird phoenix, which is reborn from its ashes, to suggest the book's rise from obscurity. [8] (Bawden and Carrie's War had been a commended runner up for the Carnegie Medal from the Library Association, recognising the year's best children's book by a British subject.) [9] [lower-alpha 1]
In 2010, Bawden and The Birds on the Trees made the shortlist for the Lost Man Booker Prize. Forty years earlier, the Booker-McConnell Prize for the year's best British novel had skipped 1970 publications. Bawden and Shirley Hazzard were the only living nominees out of the six shortlisted; the award went to J. G. Farrell for Troubles . In 2004, she was awarded the Golden PEN Award by English PEN for "a Lifetime's Distinguished Service to Literature". [10] [11]
Flambards is a novel for children or young adults by K. M. Peyton, first published by Oxford University Press in 1967 with illustrations by Victor Ambrus. Alternatively, "Flambards" is the trilogy (1967–1969) or series (1967–1981) named after its first book. The series is set in England just before, during, and after World War I.
The Carnegie Medal is a British literary award that annually recognises one outstanding new English-language book for children or young adults. It is conferred upon the author by the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP). CILIP calls it "the UK's oldest and most prestigious book award for children's writing".
Anne Fine OBE FRSL is an English writer. Although best known for children's books, she also writes for adults. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and she was appointed an OBE in 2003.
Helen Cresswell was an English television scriptwriter and author of more than 100 children's books, best known for comedy and supernatural fiction. Her most popular book series, Lizzie Dripping and The Bagthorpe Saga, were also the basis for television series.
Goodnight Mister Tom is a children's novel by English author Michelle Magorian, published by Kestrel in 1981. Harper & Row published an American edition the same year. Set during World War II, it features a boy abused at home in London who is evacuated to the country at the outbreak of the war. In the care of Mister Tom, an elderly recluse, he experiences a new life of loving and care.
Geraldine McCaughrean is a British children's novelist. She has written more than 170 books, including Peter Pan in Scarlet (2004), the official sequel to Peter Pan commissioned by Great Ormond Street Hospital, the holder of Peter Pan's copyright. Her work has been translated into 44 languages worldwide. She has received the Carnegie Medal twice and the Michael L. Printz Award among others.
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. Her critically and popularly acclaimed Noughts and Crosses series uses the setting of a fictional dystopia to explore racism. Blackman has been the recipient of many honours for her work including, most recently, the 2022 PEN Pinter Prize.
Carrie Tiffany is an English-born Australian novelist and former park ranger.
Lauren Margot Peachy Child is an English children's author and illustrator. She is best known for the Charlie and Lola picture book series and other book series. Her influences include E. H. Shepard, Quentin Blake, Carl Larsson, and Ludwig Bemelmans.
Siobhan Dowd was a British writer and activist. The last book she completed, Bog Child, posthumously won the 2009 Carnegie Medal from the professional librarians, recognising the year's best book for children or young adults published in the UK.
Anne Teresa Enright is an Irish writer. The first Laureate for Irish Fiction (2015-2018) and winner of the Man Booker Prize (2007), she has published seven novels, many short stories, and a non-fiction work called Making Babies: Stumbling into Motherhood, about the birth of her two children. Her essays on literary themes have appeared in the London Review of Books and The New York Review of Books, and she writes for the books pages of The Irish Times and The Guardian. Her fiction explores themes such as family, love, identity and motherhood.
Ann Schlee FRSL is an English novelist. She won the annual Guardian Children's Fiction Prize for The Vandal (1979), a once-in-a-lifetime book award judged by a panel of British children's writers. She was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1997.
The Lost Man Booker Prize was a special edition of the Man Booker Prize awarded by a public vote in 2010 to a novel from 1970 as the books published in 1970 were not eligible for the Man Booker Prize due to a rules alteration; until 1970 the prize was awarded to books published in the previous year, while from 1971 onwards it was awarded to books published the same year as the award. The prize was won by J. G. Farrell for Troubles.
Peter Carter was a British writer of children's books, primarily historical novels. He won several awards: the Guardian Prize, two Young Observer Prizes, and the German Preis der Leseratten. His books were shortlisted for many more prizes, and were translated into at least six languages, from Japanese to Portuguese.
Winifred Cawley was an English teacher and author of children's books. For Gran at Coalgate, published by Oxford University Press in 1974, she won the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize, a once-in-a-lifetime book award judged by a panel of British children's writers, and she was a commended runner up for the Carnegie Medal from the Library Association, recognising the year's best children's book by a British subject.
The 2012 Booker Prize for Fiction was awarded on 16 October 2012. A longlist of twelve titles was announced on 25 July, and these were narrowed down to a shortlist of six titles, announced on 11 September. The jury was chaired by Sir Peter Stothard, editor of the Times Literary Supplement, accompanied by literary critics Dinah Birch and Bharat Tandon, historian and biographer Amanda Foreman, and Dan Stevens, actor of Downton Abbey fame with a background English Literature studies. The jury was faced with the controversy of the 2011 jury, whose approach had been seen as overly populist. Whether or not as a response to this, the 2012 jury strongly emphasised the value of literary quality and linguistic innovation as criteria for inclusion.
Lesley Howarth is a British author of children's and young adult fiction. For the novel Maphead, published by Walker Books in 1994, she won the annual Guardian Children's Fiction Prize, a once-in-a-lifetime book award judged by a panel of British children's writers, and she was a runner-up for the Carnegie Medal.
Candy Gourlay is a Filipino author based in the United Kingdom who has been shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal.
Sarah Crossan is an Irish author. She is best known for her books for young adults, including Apple and Rain and One, for which she has won several rewards.
Zana Fraillon is an Australian writer of fiction for children and young adults based in Melbourne, Australia. Fraillon is known for allowing young readers to examine human rights abuses within fiction and in 2017 she won an Amnesty CILIP Honour for her book The Bone Sparrow which highlights the plight of the Rohingya people. The Bone Sparrow has been translated to stage and is set to premier in the York Theatre Royal, York, UK, from 25 February 2022.