Literary Birthday – 4 February – Siobhan Dowd

Siobhan Dowd was born on 4 February 1960 and died on 21 August 2007.

Siobhan Dowd Quotes

1. Knowledge can be like the skin on the surface of the water in a pond, or it can go all the way down to the mud. It can be the tiny tip of the iceberg or the whole hundred percent.
2. Today, every day I don’t write feels like a lost day. I never believe that a story will be finished until I’ve typed the last period. And it is always a miracle if I get it down before being run over by a juggernaut.
3. From the age of seven, I scribbled down poems, ghost stories, and mystery stories and completed my first novel at the age of nine. It was about Anne, the daughter of a harried innkeeper in Bethlehem, and very, very holey (yes, that is how I spelt the word). But it fixed my aim to write for a living when I grew up.

Siobhan Dowd was a British writer and activist. She was the first posthumous winner of the most prestigious prize in children’s literature, the Carnegie medal. Her books include A Swift Pure Cry  and Bog Child. Before she died, Siobhan left an outline for a story with her editor at Walker Books. That editor approached Patrick Ness to take on the brief outline, and he created A Monster Calls. It is the only book to win both the Carnegie Medal and the Kate Greenaway Award.

Source for photo of the author.

by Amanda Patterson
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