Author Nominee: United Kingdom

David Almond
United Kingdom, Author

Writing can be difficult, but sometimes it really does feel like a kind of magic. I think that stories are living things – among the most important things in the world.

– David Almond

David Almond was born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1951 and grew up in the small mining town of Felling, a place and landscape with which, Almond says, his writing is still suffused. As a young child Almond wrote stories and stitched them into little books and dreamed that one day his books would stand on the shelves of his little local library. Visits to his uncle's printing works confirmed his childhood longing to be a writer, a longing which never abated during his often unhappy years at school.

Following a degree in English and American literature from the University of East Anglia, he worked as a postman, a hotel porter, a magazine editor and a teacher. He moved to a remote artists' commune in Norfolk to concentrate on his writing, and on his return to Newcastle worked part-time as a special needs teacher and as an editor. Now concentrating on his own writing, he continues to work as a teacher of creative writing and is a regular speaker at international conferences.

Almond depicts both people and landscapes with a poet's skill,word-painting his subject with powerful economy. He examines the psychology of his characters, uncovering layer by layer the inner emotions – fear, uncertainty, memory – which drive each towards a greater acceptance of themselves and others. Although his work is deeply rooted in his own sometimes tempestuous Northumbrian working-class upbringing, what emerges from each of Almond's novels is a certainty that friendship and love alone are the armaments we all need to face the strangeness and uncertainty of our lives – a message for all times and people of all cultures.

His first novel for young people, Skellig, won the UK's two most prestigious awards, the Carnegie Medal and the Whit-bread Children's Book Award, an award which he again won for The Fire-Eaters. Other books of his have been shortlisted for these awards and he has received other prizes and accolades in the UK and the USA. David Almond also writes poetry and short stories, including stories for adults, and for the theatre; both Skellig and Heaven Eyes have been adapted for the stage.