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Author Biography | Interview | Books by this Author | Read-Alikes
David Almond, in his own words:
I was born in Newcastle and I grew up in a big Catholic family in
Felling-on-Tyne. I had four sisters and a brother and lots of relatives in the
streets nearby. My dad had been in Burma during the war. He and my mum married
in the late 40s. Dad became an office manager in an engineering factory. Mum was
a shorthand typist until she had the children. We moved several times when I was
a child, but always within Felling.
Felling had been a coal mining town, but by the time I remember anything the
pits were all closed. The river at the foot of the town was lined with
warehouses and shipyards. At the summit was a wild area we called the Heather
Hills. I loved playing football in the fields above the town, camping out with
my friends, messing about with my grandfather in his allotment. I was an altar
boy, and I still know snatches of the Latin mass by heart. I loved our local
library, and dreamed of seeing my books on its shelves one day. Favourite books
as a child/teenager included the tales of King Arthur and his knights, the books
of T. Lobsang Rampa, and Hemingway's stories. I also used to read my sisters'
Enid Blytons. I always knew that I wanted to be a writer. One of my uncles had a
small printing works. My mum said that she used to take me there as a baby and I
used to laugh and point at the printed pages coming off the rollers - so maybe I
began to fall in love with print when I was just a few months old.
I went to primary schools in Felling and Sunderland - both of which I liked. I
went to grammar school in Hebburn - which I disliked. To the surprise of some
people (e.g. a few teachers and especially my headmaster) I went on to the
University of East Anglia and did a degree in English and American Literature.
After stints as a hotel porter, postman and labourer, I trained to be a teacher.
It seemed the perfect job for a writer: short hours, long holidays, what more
could I want? How wrong I was. I wasn't just exhausted by it, I also found it
fascinating, and I learned a huge amount. I worked five years in a primary
school on a large estate in Gateshead.
While I was there, my first short stories began to be published in little
magazines. I needed more time to write, so I resigned and sold my house. I went
to live in a commune based in a dilapidated mansion in a beautiful part of
Norfolk. I lived for a year and a half on a few hundred pounds and wrote my
first decent stories there. When my money ran out, I found a job writing
booklets for an adult literacy scheme. This led to my final teaching job, in a
school for children with learning difficulties.
My first book for young people, Skellig, was published in 1998. Before that,
many short stories had appeared in magazines and anthologies, and were broadcast
on Radio 4. Two collections of my stories for adults, Sleepless Nights (1985)
and A Kind of Heaven (1997), were put out by IRON Press, a small North Eastern
publisher. I was editor of the fiction magazine Panurge from 1987-93. I wrote
a novel called Seances that took five years to write and was rejected by every
publisher in the country. Then Skellig came along. It seemed to come out of the
blue, as if it had been waiting a long time to be told. At times seemed to write
itself. Since Skellig, I've written several more children's novels: Kit's
Wilderness, Heaven Eyes, Secret Heart, The Fire-Eaters, and Clay; and a
collection of stories based on my childhood, Counting Stars. My first picture
book, Kate, the Cat and the Moon, illustrated by the wonderful Stephen Lambert,
came out in 2004. I also write for the theatre. My first children's play, Wild
Girl, Wild Boy toured the UK in 2001. My stage adaptation of Skellig was
produced at The Young Vic in 2003, alongside my play for younger children, My
Dad's a Birdman. Heaven Eyes was premiered at The Edinburgh Fringe in 2005.
I live with my family in Northumberland. We live just beyond the Roman Wall,
which for centuries marked the place where civilisation ended and the waste
lands began.
David Almond's website
This bio was last updated on 07/30/2017. In a perfect world, we would like to keep all of BookBrowse's biographies up to date, but with many thousands of lives to keep track of it's simply impossible to do. So, if the date of this bio is not recent, you may wish to do an internet search for a more current source, such as the author's website or social media presence. If you are the author or publisher and would like us to update this biography, send the complete text and we will replace the old with the new.
Dear Reader
The Tightrope Walkers has lots
of connections with my own life. I lived in a house rather like Dom's when I was a boy. My own father fought in Burma
during World War II, just like Dom's. Miss Fagan, Dom's first teacher, is based on my own first teacher. I remember her kindness, and the beautiful way she shaped letters and words with chalk on the blackboard.
I knew many people who worked in the shipyards that lined the banks of the river Tyne in the '60s and '70s. I worked in a shipyard myself for a couple of summers when I was a student. I
cleaned tanks, just like Dom, and it was one of the most terrifying experiences of my life. We had a tramp in our town, rather like Jack Law, and he was a romantic figure to me, living his life of nonmaterialistic freedom in the hills above town. The bookshop, Ultima Thule, was a real place, and Ginsberg and Ferlinghetti really did visit and read. And I partied on the beautiful Northumbrian beaches, and listened to Joni Mitchell, and grew my hair, and dreamed of California and love and peace.
The book is fiction, of course: a merging of
memory and imagination, truth and lies. I never
knew a boy quite like Vincent McAlinden, but he
does have similarities to some ...
David Almond, in his own words:
I was born in Newcastle and I grew up in a big Catholic family in
Felling-on-Tyne. I had four sisters and a brother and lots of relatives in the
streets nearby. My dad had been in Burma ...
(more)
If you enjoyed:
Raven Summer
Try:
The Tightrope Walkers
by David Almond
Niccolò Ammaniti was born in Rome in 1966. He is the author of three novels, as well as a collection of short stories. At thirty-four, he was the youngest ever winner of the prestigious Viareggio-Repaci prize for I'm Not... (more)
If you enjoyed:
Raven Summer
Try:
I'm Not Scared
by Niccolò Ammaniti
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