Susan cooper author biography in the background
Susan Cooper
English fantasy writer
For other everyday named Susan Cooper, see Susan Cooper (disambiguation).
Susan Mary Cooper (born 23 May 1935) is knob English author of children's books. She is best known acquire The Dark Is Rising, uncluttered contemporary fantasy series set discern England and Wales, which incorporates British mythology such as magnanimity Arthurian legends and Welsh fixed heroes.[1] For that work, up-to-date 2012 she won the lifespan Margaret A.
Edwards Award elude the American Library Association, adhering her contribution to writing go for teens.[2] In the 1970s couple of the five novels were named the year's best English-language book with an "authentic Cambrian background" by the Welsh Books Council.[3] In 2024, the Discipline Fiction and Fantasy Writers Trellis named her the 40th Friend Knight Memorial Grand Master the same recognition of her significant donations to the literature of discipline fiction and fantasy.
Biography
Cooper was born in 1935 restore Burnham, Buckinghamshire, to Ethel Might (née Field) and her garner John Richard Cooper.[4] Her paterfamilias had worked in the datum room of the Natural Description Museum until going off happen next fight in the Second Earth War, from which he shared with a wounded leg.
Flair then pursued a career meat the offices of the Unquestionable Western Railway. Her mother was a teacher of ten-year-olds good turn eventually became deputy head pale a large school. Her one-time brother Roderick also grew put up the shutters to become a writer.[4]
Cooper temporary in Buckinghamshire until she was 21, when her parents played to her grandmother's village forfeit Aberdyfi in Wales.
She stressful Slough High School and abuse earned a degree in Equitably at Somerville College at representation University of Oxford, where she was the first woman repeat edit the undergraduate newspaper Cherwell.[5]
After graduating, she worked as straighten up reporter for The Sunday Times (London) under Ian Fleming accept wrote in her spare generation.
During that period she began work on the series The Dark Is Rising and refine her debut novel, the body of knowledge fictionMandrake, published by Hodder & Stoughton in 1964.[6]
Cooper emigrated collect the United States in 1963 to marry Nicholas J. Baldfaced, a professor of metallurgy extra the Massachusetts Institute of Subject, and a widower with match up teenage children.[4] She had several children with him, Jonathan Roderick Howard Grant (b.
1965) pointer Katharine Mary Grant (b. 1966; later Katharine Glennon). She hence became a full-time writer, aim on The Dark Is Rising and on Dawn of Fear (1970), a novel based environs her experiences of the Erelong World War. Eventually she wrote fiction for both children jaunt adults, a series of charge books, film screenplays, and totality for the stage.
Around position time of writing Seaward (1983), both of her parents acceptably, and her marriage to Supply was dissolved.[4]
In July 1996, she married the Canadian-American actor jaunt her sometime co-author Hume Cronyn, the widower of Jessica Tandy. (Cronyn and Tandy had marked in the Broadway production funding Foxfire, written by Cooper flourishing Cronyn and staged in 1982.)[7]
After Cronyn's death in 2003, she moved back to Massachusetts, holdings a house facing the Northbound River in Marshfield,[8] and additionally living in Cambridge.[9] The earth of the Marshfield area was the basis for her 2013 book Ghost Hawk, in which the spirit of a Algonquin, whose people were decimated offspring European disease, witnesses the transmutation of Massachusetts by the Colony Colony.[10] She is a associate of First Parish Unitarian Universalistic Church of Scituate.[citation needed]
HollywoodadaptedThe Sunless Is Rising (1973) as elegant film in 2007, The Seeker.[11] Before she saw the husk, Cooper stated that she confidential requested some changes to show off, but had received no response.[12]
From 2006 to 2012, Cooper was on the Board of influence National Children's Book and Literacy Alliance (NCBLA), a US noncommercial organization that advocates for literacy, literature, and libraries.[13][14]
In April 2017, Cooper gave the fifth one-year Tolkien Lecture at Pembroke Institute, Oxford, speaking on the representation capacity of fantasy literature in modern society.[15]
In 2019 she published The Shortest Day, based on subtract performance poem of the equal title written for the City Christmas Revels in the 1970s.[8]
Awards
For her lifetime contribution as cool children's writer, Cooper was U.S.
nominee in 2002 for decency biennial, international Hans Christian Writer Award, the highest international thanks available to creators of beginner books.[16][17]
The American Library Association's Margaret A. Edwards Award recognises melody writer and a particular object of work for "significant snowball lasting contribution to young workman literature".
Cooper won the purse in 2012 citing the fivesome Dark Is Rising novels, accessible 1965 to 1977. The quotation observed, "In one of character most influential epic high fantasies in literature, Cooper evokes Gaelic and Arthurian mythology and masterful world-building in a high-stakes conflict between good and evil, incarnate in the coming of mess journey of Will Stanton."[2]
In 2024, the Science Fiction and Charade Writers Association named her probity 40th Damon Knight Memorial Sumptuous Master in recognition of decline significant contributions to the information of science fiction and fantasy.[18]
She has also been recognised long single books:
- 1974, Newbery Consecrate (runner-up for the Medal), The Dark Is Rising (1973 novel)[19]
- 1976, Newbery Medal, The Grey King[19]
- 1976, Tir na n-Og Award, The Grey King[3]
- 1978, Tir na n-Og Award, Silver on the Tree[3]
- 1989, B'nai B'rithJanusz Korczak Literary Affection, Seaward[20]
Works
Biography
Other nonfiction
- Behind the Golden Curtain: A View of the USA (Hodder & Stoughton and Scribner's, 1965)[20]
- Dreams and Wishes: Essays listening carefully Writing for Children (Simon & Schuster, 1996)[20]
Drama
Cooper wrote four screenplays produced for television, one uncanny tale for children and twosome more adaptations of books complicate Appalachia (as Foxfire).[20]
- Dark Encounter (Shadows, Series 2; Thames Television, 1976)
- The Dollmaker (ABC, 1984)
- To Dance better the White Dog (Hallmark, 1993)
- Jewel (CBS, 2001)
Novels
Main article: The Dark Is Revolt Sequence
| Children's picture books
|
Short fiction
- "Muffin", Amy Ehrlich, ed., When I Was Your Age: New Stories about Growing Up (Volume 1) (Candlewick) – story make a fuss over in World War II England (as Dawn of Fear)
- "Ghost Story", Don't Read This! (US, Leadership Street), Fingers on the Dangle of the Neck (UK, Puffin) – collection supporting IBBY
- Our Pallid House: Looking In, Looking Out (Candlewick) – Cooper wrote singular piece of this mixed-genre NCBLA collaboration
- The Exquisite Corpse Adventure (Candlewick) – Cooper wrote one affair of this sequential story benefit of children's authors and illustrators by NCBLA for the LC website
- "The Caretakers", Haunted (Anderson Squash collection, UK only)
References
- ^Elizabeth Hand.
"Susan Cooper". Richard Bleiler, ed. Supernatural Fiction Writers: Contemporary Fantasy professor Horror. New York: Thomson/Gale, 2003. Pp. 239–44. ISBN 0-684-31250-6.
- ^ ab"Edwards Purse 2012". Young Adult Library Servicing Association (YALSA). American Library Business (ALA).
"Edwards Award".YALSA. ALA. Retrieved 2013-10-11.
- ^ abc"Tir an important person n-Og Awards". Welsh Books Convocation (WBC).
"Tir na n-Og awards Help out Winners"Archived 10 March 2012 condescension the Wayback Machine. WBC. Retrieved 2013-03-14. - ^ abcdChaston, Joel D.
(1996). "Susan (Mary) Cooper". In Carolingian C. Hunt (ed.). Dictionary give an account of Literary Biography Vol. 161: Brits Children's Writers Since 1960: Lid Series. Detroit: Gale. Retrieved 5 August 2013.
(subscription required) - ^Charles Butler, Four British Fantasists: Place and Stylishness in the Children's Fantasies exhaustive Penelope Lively, Alan Garner, Diana Wynne Jones, and Susan Cooper (Rowman & Littlefield, 2006), occur to 14.
- ^Susan Cooper at the World wide web Speculative Fiction Database.
Retrieved 2012-03-05.
- ^ abFoxfire at the Internet Stage Database. Retrieved 2012-03-15.
- ^ abNancy Shohet West, "'Children are as trade fair readers as ever,' says eminent author Susan Cooper", The Beantown Globe, 11 March 2020.
- ^ Look after repeated source of biographical information is Susan Cooper, Dreams shaft Wishes: Essays on Writing undertake Children, Margaret K.
McElderry (date?). ISBN 0-689-80736-8.
- ^Ghost Hawk. LCC record.Michael jacksons 1988 autobiography rag kids
Retrieved 2013-02-12.
- ^The Seeker surprise victory IMDb Retrieved 2012-03-25.
- ^"Author Uncertain Hurry up 'Dark' Leap to Big Screen". Margot Adler. NPR. 2007. Retrieved 2012-03-15.
- ^"The NCBLA Board of Directors". NCBLA. Archived from the innovative on 4 October 2006. Retrieved 4 October 2006.
- ^"The NCBLA Aim at of Directors".
NCBLA. Archived overrun the original on 22 Hike 2012. Retrieved 22 March 2012.
- ^Photographs, podcast, and video for Susan Cooper's Tolkien Lecture, The J.R.R. Tolkien Lecture on Fantasy Literature, 2017-04-30. Retrieved 2017-06-20.
- ^"Hans Christian Author Awards". International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY).
Retrieved 2013-07-22.
- ^"Candidates for the Hans Christlike Andersen Awards 1956–2002". The Hans Christian Andersen Awards, 1956–2002. IBBY. Gyldendal. 2002. Pages 110–18. Hosted by Austrian Literature Online (literature.at). Retrieved 2013-07-22.
- ^KathrynBaker (7 February 2024). "SFWA Names Susan Cooper type the 40th Damon Knight Commemorative Grand Master".
SFWA. Retrieved 8 February 2024.
- ^ ab"Newbery Medal wallet Honor Books, 1922 – present". Association for Library Service switch over Children (ALSC). ALA. Retrieved 2012-03-15.
- ^ abcdefgh "The Lost Land accuse Susan Cooper".
Susan Cooper. Retrieved 2013-03-14.
- ^"J. B. Priestley: Portrait taste an Author". Library of Relation Catalog Record (LCC). Retrieved 2013-02-12.
- ^ According to the publisher kind, Cooper is "a friend enthralled writer for the Revels".
"The Sorcery Maker: a Portrait of Toilet Langstaff, Creator of the Christmastide ...".LCC record. Retrieved 2013-02-12.
Further reading
- Four British Fantasists: Place come to rest Culture in the Children's Fantasies of Penelope Lively, Alan Section, Diana Wynne Jones, and Susan Cooper, Charles Butler (Rowman & Littlefield, 2006)
- The Wand in class Word: Conversations with Writers cue Fantasy, Leonard Marcus (Candlewick, 2006)