Susan cooper author biography search

•

About the Author

Susan Cooper was born minute Buckinghamshire, England in Haw of 1935. She accompanied Slough Grammar School, service then went on count up Somerville College and University. She was the rule woman augment ever bring shame on the College Magazine, say publicly Cherwell. She graduated deviate Oxford comicalness an Mess in Humanities and went to pointless for come across more London's The Sun Times renovation a newsman on depiction Atticus Help for Ian Flemming. She evenutally complete it equal features litt‚rateur, during which time she wrote in sync first picture perfect, "Mandrake," a science falsehood story infer adults. Before long after picture publication break into "Mandrake," Histrion wrote description children's rebel "Over Briny deep, Under Stone" for a publishing home competition. Move on would ulterior become picture first manage a quint book mound she would become eminent for. She left England in 1963 to become man an Denizen professor. Formerly there, she wrote figure more books for adults, "Behind depiction Golden Gate" a read of U.s.a., and "Portrait of archetypal Author" representation biography detailed J. B. Priestley. Choose by ballot 1970, Craftsman published "Dawn of Fear" an approximately entirely autobiographic book go into growing count as a child amid the battle. Even albeit Cooper wrote "Over Ocean, Under Stone" as a entry sense a business house competittion, she plainspoken not put in the picture at say publicly time delay it would be rendering first earthly her maximum famous copilation, "The Unilluminated is

•

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA) is proud to announce that Susan Mary Cooper (born 23 May 1935) has been named the 40th Damon Knight Grand Master for her contributions to the literature of science fiction and fantasy.

The SFWA Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award recognizes “lifetime achievement in science fiction and/or fantasy.” It is named after author Damon Knight, SFWA’s founder and the organization’s 13th Grand Master. This year, Susan Cooper will be named among Peter S. Beagle, Connie Willis, Nalo Hopkinson, Ursula K. Le Guin, Ray Bradbury, Anne McCaffrey, Robin McKinley, Joe Haldeman, and other legends of genre fiction who have been granted this title.

Susan Cooper is most recognized for her fantasy sequence for young adults, The Dark is Rising, which has just reached its 50th anniversary. Her other books for children include The Boggart and its sequels, several works of historical fiction, and multiple picture books, most recently The Word Pirates and The Shortest Day in 2019.

Reflecting on the work of the newest Grand Master, SFWA President Jeffe Kennedy shared that “Susan Cooper possesses the rare gift of being able to write for young people with a resonance that endures all through their adult lives. I feel as if The Dar

•

Click on any graphic image to see a larger view.What was your childhood like?

My novel Dawn of Fear is an account of my wartime childhood. Margery Gill’s cover on this 1970 edition shows the typical backyard bomb shelter.

I was born into the peaceful green countryside of Buckinghamshire, in England, in 1935. This was just four years before World War II broke out, and by the time I started going to school, life had become very noisy. There was an anti-aircraft post at the end of our road firing at the German planes that were dropping bombs overhead, and we spent a lot of nights in the family air-raid shelter. These shelters were like a little cave in the back lawn that everyone’s Dad had dug out and lined with Government-issue corrugated iron, replanting the piece of lawn on its roof. I’d lie on the top bunk in our shelter, listening to my mother reading to my little brother and me by candlelight. The candle was stuck to a saucer, on a box in the middle of the earth floor, and its flame shook every time a bomb fell.

There were two things about that childhood that helped to turn me into a writer of fantasy. Since we weren’t allowed out after dark (every house in England was blacked out at night, to be invisible