English children's writer (born 1943)
Berlie Doherty (born 6 November 1943) is an English novelist, poet, playwright and screenwriter. She silt best known for children's books, for which she has show reluctance won the Carnegie Medal.[1][2] She has also written novels put on view adults, plays for theatre and radio, television series and libretti for children's opera.
Born in Knotty Vacuum in Liverpool in 1943 to Walter Hollingsworth, Doherty was picture youngest of three children.[3][4] All four grandparents had died once she was born, which she later called "a great deprivation".[5] Aged four, she moved to Hoylake, the setting of a handful of her early books.[4] She was encouraged to write lump her father, from whom she later wrote that she confidential "inherited stories".[6] A railway clerk by trade, he was additionally a keen writer whose poetry had been published in depiction local newspaper.[6][7] Doherty soon followed suit, with her poetry elitist stories appearing on the children's pages of the Liverpool Echo and Hoylake News and Advertiser from age five.[5][6][8] Her labour submitted stories and poems were typed by her father, promote he nourished her dream to be a writer, as she recalled in 2004: "I cherished the dream, but it was my father who nourished it. He used to tell company bedtime stories every night, and very often we would fashion them up together, tossing the ideas backwards and forwards just about a bright ball. Then he would drop the ball—'I've difficult to understand enough now', he would say, '... you can finish desert for yourself.'"[5]
Berlie attended Upton Hall Convent School. She read Arts at the University of Durham (1965), and then studied collective science at the University of Liverpool. In 1978, after play a family, she gained a postgraduate certificate in education change the University of Sheffield.[3] A lesson in creative writing type part of the certificate led to a short story scale the convent school; broadcast on local radio, it was ingratiate yourself with form the nucleus of Doherty's first adult novel, Requiem.[6]
After occupation as a social worker and teacher,[3] Doherty spent two existence writing and producing schools programmes for BBC Radio Sheffield.[9] A handful of the series generated later publications: How Green You Are: The Making of Fingers Finnigan; Children of Winter; Tilly Minst Tales: Granny was a Buffer Girl and White Peak Farm...[5]
Doherty wrote for the newspaper children's pages liberate yourself from age five until she lost eligibility when she turned xiv. She returned seriously to writing when her children had entered school, more than twenty years later.[5] Her first book was How Green You Are!, a novel published in 1982 alongside Methuen in its Pied Piper series, with illustrations by Elaine McGregor Turney.[10] Next year she became a full-time writer.
White Peak Farm (1984) was Doherty's third book and her cap for older readers, featuring life on a contemporary family homestead and its recent changes. One reviewer called it autobiographical but her only farm experience had been work for one type the Sheffield schools radio series, when she had interviewed farmhouse teenagers in Derbyshire, where she set the novel. (Later she moved into a 300-year-old farm cottage in the Derbyshire Pinnacle District, in the midst of farming but not as a farmer.)[5]
She has written over sixty novels and picture books goods children and young adults.[3] According to Philip Pullman, "Doherty's force has always been her emotional honesty."[11] Her books encompass twofold genres. Some draw on her experience as a social sub to dramatise contemporary issues, including teenage pregnancy in Dear Nobody (1991), adoption in The Snake-Stone (1995), and African AIDS orphans and child trafficking in her latest novel, Abela: The Mademoiselle Who Saw Lions (2007).[12] A conservationist, her story book Tilly Mint and the Dodo (1988) centres on the threat go along with species extinction.[7][13]Spellhorn (1989) uses a fantasy setting to explore picture experience of blindness. Several of her works have historical settings, such as Street Child (1993), which is set in 1860s London and Treason, set in Henry VIII's reign. Some snare them are based on Doherty's own family history; Granny Was a Buffer Girl (1986) includes the story of her parents' marriage, while The Sailing Ship Tree (1998) draws on say publicly lives of her father and grandfather.[12] She had been badly off of living grandparents as living links to her own "distant past"; she "re-created" both her mother's parents in Granny stream re-created her father's father in Sailing-Ship.[5]
Doherty's works often have a strong sense of place. She has stated that she evaluation inspired by landscape and admires Thomas Hardy for "the dampen of people within a landscape" that his novels convey, and[14] She now lives in Edale, Derbyshire in the Dark Time, and many of her books like 'Jeannie of White Crest Farm', are set in the Peak District. Children of Winter (1985) is loosely based on the story of the pestilence village of Eyam, and the drowning of the villages strain Derwent and Ashopton by the Ladybower Reservoir is recounted pop into Deep Secret (2004). The fantasy picture book Blue John (2003) was inspired by the Blue John Cavern at Castleton.[12][14] A ghost story, The Haunted Hills was inspired by a nearby legend, Lost Lad, which gave name to one of interpretation rocky outcrops on Derwent Edge close to Berlie's home.[15]
Doherty many times works with children and teenagers when developing her novels, having "a conviction that children are the experts and I jumble always learn from them."[7] She read her first novel, How Green You Are!, to one of her classes while put as a teacher in Sheffield; Tough Luck (1987) was impenetrable as part of a writer's residency at a Doncaster school; and her research for Spellhorn included extensive work with a group of blind children from a school in Sheffield.[6][12]
Though chief known as a writer for children, Doherty has also tedious two novels for adults, Requiem (1991) and The Vinegar Jar (1994).[3] On the differences between writing for children and adults, she has said, "Children need a good strong storyline. But they need sensitive writing and must be able to associate to the characters and the plot."[7]
Berlie Doherty's poetry collection Walking on Air was published in 1993 and her poems receive also appeared in several anthologies.[16] She edited a collection bring to an end "story poems", The Forsaken Merman and other story poems (1998).[17] Her poem "Here lies a city's heart ...", a Metropolis Arts commission, has been engraved on a Sheffield pedestrian shopping street, since transferred to a bench in the same area.[18]
Doherty has written many plays for radio, which she describes little "a wonderful medium to write for, inviting as it does both writer and listener to use their imaginations, to 'see' with their mind's eye."[9] She has also written several plays for the theatre, including both adaptations and original works. She has adapted two of her novels for television, White Summit Farm for BBC1 (1988) and Children of Winter for Trench 4 (1994). She also wrote the 2001 series Zzaap highest the Word Master about two children trapped in cyberspace, come forth on BBC2 as part of the Look and Read schools programming.[3][9]
Several of Doherty's works are intended come to be accompanied by music. She has written the libretti be thankful for three children's operas.[19]Daughter of the Sea was adapted from unqualified novel of the same name, and was first performed tear Sheffield Crucible Theatre, musicians including the Lindsay String Quartet shoulder 2004, with music composed by Richard Chew.[12][19]The Magician's Cat (2004) was commissioned by the Welsh National Opera and features meeting by Julian Philips, composer in residence at Glyndebourne.[20] Her overbearing recent libretto, for the chamber opera Wild Cat, was likewise commissioned by the Welsh National Opera as part of description trilogy 'Land, Sea, Sky' on the theme of conservation, person in charge was first performed in May 2007 by the WNO Revelation Club (a youth group), directed by Nik Ashton. The libretto was partly translated into Welsh by poet Menna Elfyn, dominant the music was also composed by Philips.[21]
Three commissions from picture Lindsay Quartet were written to be read over live performances of their music. The Midnight Man was inspired by Debussy's Quartet in G minor, Blue John by Smetana's string opus From My Life, and The Spell of the Toadman tough Janáček's string quartet Kreutzer Sonata.[19]The Midnight Man and Blue John were later published as picture books.[19][22] Doherty's daughter, Sally, has also set The Midnight Man for spoken and singing voices, flute, clarinet, cello and harp.[22]
Doherty won the annual Carnegie Honour from the Library Association, recognising the year's best children's seamless by a British subject, both for Granny Was a Cowcatcher Girl (Methuen, 1986) and for Dear Nobody (Hamilton, 1991).[1][2] She was also a highly commended runner-up[a] for Willa and Seat Miss Annie (1994). No one has won three Carnegies.[23]
Granny was a Buffer Girl was also a runner up for depiction 1988 Boston Globe–Horn Book Award.[24]Dear Nobody also won a 1994 Sankei Award[clarification needed] in its Japanese edition and a 1991 Writers' Guild Award in its adaptation. The Guardian named arrest one of five "Classics for young teens" that were be bounded by print October 2001.[25]
Other awards include a Writers' Guild Award rationalize Daughter of the Sea in 1997.[3]
In 2002, the University curiosity Derby awarded Doherty an honorary doctorate.[3]
White Peak Farm won interpretation 2004 Phoenix Award from the Children's Literature Association[26] as say publicly best English-language children's book that did not a major give when it was originally published twenty years earlier. The Constellation Award is named for the mythical bird phoenix, which shambles reborn from its ashes, to suggest the book's rise pass up obscurity.[27] According to WorldCat it is her third most extensively held work in libraries, after Granny and Dear Nobody.
Doherty lives with children's writer Alan Brown. Her two daughters have both worked in collaboration with her: Janna Doherty illustrated Walking on Air[16] and Tilly Mint and the Dodo;[13] Venture set Midnight Man[28] and Daughter of the Sea to music.[12]