Meet the Allsorts (2)

Welcome back to Author Allsorts! This week we’re introducing you to our group of UK-based authors and illustrators of picture books, children’s and YA fiction. AND we’ll be ending the week with a giveaway. Ready to meet more Allsorts?

Imogen Howson
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When Imogen was little, she loved reading so much that she read, not only in bed, at the table and in the bath, but in the shower and – not so successfully – on her bicycle.
She enjoyed books in a slightly unorthodox way, too – many of her childhood books have ragged edges where she tore paper from the margins in order to eat it.
When she was eight, she wrote her first book. It was called The Dragon in the Teapot, and she lost the only copy on a family day out. When she was thirty-two, she accidentally deleted 120,000 words of another book, and discovered that the only back-up disk had corrupted. Both times, there may have been tears.
She lives near Sherwood Forest with her partner, their two teenage daughters, three cats, and several different forms of electronic back-up. She still reads in most places, but she no longer eats paper.

R.M. Ivory
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Rhian Tracey was found on the slushpile at Bloomsbury Children’s Books. The slightly quirky title of her first novel ‘When Isla meets Luke meets Isla’ caught the eye of a commissioning editor and 4 book deals followed.
Rhian is now writing as R.M.Ivory (her married name) and has recently finished her 5th novel which is about art, witches, ghosts and a river with a past. She has started on her 6th novel which will be set during World War II and the present day.
Rhian has always wanted to be a writer but was told to get a proper job, so she trained as a teacher. Rhian currently lectures in Creative Writing and Children’s literature but spends as much time as possible on her non-proper job, writing.
Rhian is represented by Kirsty McLachlan of David Godwin Associates.

Sharon Jones
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Undiscovered Voices 2012 winner, Sharon Jones, has been writing since childhood. While studying for a degree in politics and then a Masters in theology, she worked in two independent bookshops where she developed a love of young adult fiction. Sharon gained a doctorate in the theology of story whilst being den mother to 500 undergraduates and has taught courses on everything from the philosophy of education to the history of Neo-Paganism. Having lived in Liverpool, Cambridge, Warwick and Colchester, she now lives back in her native Lancashire with a giant white poodle, Harvey.

Sangu Mandanna
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Sangu Mandanna was four years old when she was chased by an elephant and wrote her first story about it and decided that this was what she wanted to do with her life. Seventeen years later, she read Frankenstein. It sent her into a writing frenzy that became The Lost Girl, a novel about death and love and the tie that binds the two together.The Lost Girl is out now from HarperCollins Children’s Books (North America), Random House Children’s Books (UK and Commonwealth) and in translation. Sangu lives in England with her husband and baby son. Find Sangu online at www.sangumandanna.com or on Twitter (@SanguMandanna).

Rose Mannering
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Rose Mannering is an English writer and international author. She divides her time between her home county of Kent and Surrey where she is currently attending university, studying English Literature. She signed up with literary agency, Creative Authors, when she was eighteen and secured her first UK publishing deal when she was nineteen. Her fantasy novel ‘Roses’ will be released in autumn this year. When she’s not writing then she is playing with her twin Minature Schnauzers.

Zoë Marriott
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YA novelist Zoë Marriott lives on the bleak and windy East coast of Britain, in a house crowded with books, cats, and an eccentric sprocker named Finn (also known as the Devil Hound). Her folk and fairytale inspired fantasy novels are critically acclaimed and have been nominated for many awards, even winning a few, including a USBBY Outstanding International Book listing for The Swan Kingdom and a Junior Library Guild Selection and the prestigious Sasakawa Prize for Shadows on the Moon. In July 2013 The Night Itself, the start of an epic new urban fantasy trilogy, will be unleashed onto the world in a tide of Kitsune, Kami and katanas. Zoë is proudly represented by Nancy Miles of the Miles Stott Children’s Literacy Agency.

Elizabeth May
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ELIZABETH MAY is an occasional book cover photographer, a fantasy novelist, a lazy PhD student, and an accomplished coffee drinker. She resides in Edinburgh, Scotland, where she can frequently be spotted skulking about dark wynds with a camera in hand.

 

Amy McCulloch
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Amy McCulloch is a Canadian living in London, who fits writing around work as a Commissioning Editor at one of the UK’s leading fantasy imprints. She was bitten by the travel bug at an early age while accompanying her parents on buying trips around the world for their oriental carpet business. It was this love of travel that inspired her to set a novel in a hot, desert location (moving to freezing Ottawa, Canada, where her first winter hit -40°C, might have had something to do with that too). She studied Medieval and Old English literature at the University of Toronto. The Oathbreaker’s Shadow is her first book and will be published on June 6 2013 by Random House Children’s Books with the sequel following a year later. The Canadian rights have been sold to Doubleday Canada.

Fletcher Moss
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Fletcher Moss was an Alderman of Manchester who upon his death over a century ago, bequeathed a beautiful botanical gardens to the people of the city; a noble and generous gesture. This Fletcher Moss has significantly less to recommend him – he’s an Assistant Headteacher at a school in Greater Manchester who needed a pseudonym for the writing he fits in between lesson planning, marking and rattling around the M60 in his second-hand Citroen. He lives in Manchester with his wife and young daughter. He is working on his second and third novels at the same time – surely a recipe for disaster if ever there was one.

Sarah Naughton
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Sarah Naughton’s debut YA thriller, The Hanged Man Rises, was published by Simon and Schuster in 2013. Her second YA novel, The Blood List, is due to come out in early 2014. After a degree in English Literature at UCL she worked as an advertising copywriter for ten years before leaving to have children. Now she mostly writes and sometimes sings nursery rhymes with toddlers at her local library. She lives in central London with her husband and two sons.

Come back on Friday for Meet the Allsorts part 3 and the giveaway!