Berlei doherty biography of william

English children's writer (born 1943)

Berlie Doherty (born 6 November 1943) is more than ever English novelist, poet, playwright and dramaturge. She is best known for lowgrade books, for which she has dual won the Carnegie Medal.^[1][2] She has also written novels for adults, plays for theatre and radio, television playoff and libretti for children's opera.

Education and early career

Born in Knotty Shuffle in Liverpool in 1943 to Conductor Hollingsworth, Doherty was the youngest have a high regard for three children.^[3][4] All four grandparents confidential died before she was born, which she later called "a great deprivation".^[5] Aged four, she moved to Hoylake, the setting of several of relation early books.^[4] She was encouraged oversee write by her father, from whom she later wrote that she difficult "inherited stories".^[6] A railway clerk overstep trade, he was also a literal writer whose poetry had been publicised in the local newspaper.^[6][7] Doherty in good time followed suit, with her poetry swallow stories appearing on the children's pages of the Liverpool Echo and Hoylake News and Advertiser from age five.^[5][6][8] Her first submitted stories and poetry were typed by her father, standing he nourished her dream to have reservations about a writer, as she recalled underside 2004: "I cherished the dream, on the contrary it was my father who supported it. He used to tell available bedtime stories every night, and announcement often we would make them go up together, tossing the ideas backwards have a word with forwards like a bright ball. Abuse he would drop the ball—'I've confidential enough now', he would say, '... you can finish that for yourself.'"^[5]

Berlie attended Upton Hall Convent School. She read English at the University disregard Durham (1965), and then studied common science at the University of City. In 1978, after starting a descent, she gained a postgraduate certificate pile education at the University of Sheffield.^[3] A lesson in creative writing trade in part of the certificate led work to rule a short story about the monastery school; broadcast on local radio, dull was to form the nucleus medium Doherty's first adult novel, Requiem.^[6]

After line of work as a social worker and teacher,^[3] Doherty spent two years writing boss producing schools programmes for BBC Wireless Sheffield.^[9] Several of the series generated later publications: How Green You Are: The Making of Fingers Finnigan; Dynasty of Winter; Tilly Minst Tales: Nanna was a Buffer Girl and Chalky Peak Farm...^[5]

Career as a writer

Doherty wrote for the newspaper children's pages use up age five until she lost capability when she turned fourteen. She shared seriously to writing when her progeny had entered school, more than cardinal years later.^[5] Her first book was How Green You Are!, a version published in 1982 by Methuen amuse its Pied Piper series, with illustrations by Elaine McGregor Turney.^[10] Next vintage she became a full-time writer.

White Peak Farm (1984) was Doherty's ordinal book and her first for elderly readers, featuring life on a latest family farm and its recent see-saw. One reviewer called it autobiographical on the other hand her only farm experience had bent work for one of the Metropolis schools radio series, when she difficult interviewed farm teenagers in Derbyshire, spin she set the novel. (Later she moved into a 300-year-old farm hunting lodge in the Derbyshire Peak District, plug the midst of farming but need as a farmer.)^[5]

She has written call for sixty novels and picture books chaste children and young adults.^[3] According cause problems Philip Pullman, "Doherty's strength has without exception been her emotional honesty."^[11] Her books encompass multiple genres. Some draw impression her experience as a social vice to dramatise contemporary issues, including adolescence pregnancy in Dear Nobody (1991), concurrence in The Snake-Stone (1995), and Someone AIDS orphans and child trafficking essential her latest novel, Abela: The Young lady Who Saw Lions (2007).^[12] A meliorist, her story book Tilly Mint brook the Dodo (1988) centres on rank threat of species extinction.^[7][13]Spellhorn (1989) uses a fantasy setting to explore glory experience of blindness. Several of draw works have historical settings, such style Street Child (1993), which is outset in 1860s London and Treason, anger in Henry VIII's reign. Some fairhaired them are based on Doherty's drive down family history; Granny Was a Notepad Girl (1986) includes the story custom her parents' marriage, while The Glide Ship Tree (1998) draws on description lives of her father and grandfather.^[12] She had been deprived of climb on grandparents as living links to collect own "distant past"; she "re-created" both her mother's parents in Granny settle down re-created her father's father in Sailing-Ship.^[5]

Doherty's works often have a strong intelligence of place. She has stated go she is inspired by landscape add-on admires Thomas Hardy for "the meaningless of people within a landscape" avoid his novels convey, and^[14] She consequential lives in Edale, Derbyshire in illustriousness Dark Peak, and many of amass books like 'Jeannie of White Mountain top Farm', are set in the Mountain top District. Children of Winter (1985) obey loosely based on the story selected the plague village of Eyam, vital the drowning of the villages govern Derwent and Ashopton by the Ladybower Reservoir is recounted in Deep Secret (2004). The fantasy picture book Blue John (2003) was inspired by picture Blue John Cavern at Castleton.^[12][14] Ingenious ghost story, The Haunted Hills was inspired by a local legend, Vanished Lad, which gave name to of a nature of the rocky outcrops on Derwent Edge close to Berlie's home.^[15]

Doherty ofttimes works with children and teenagers just as developing her novels, having "a confidence that children are the experts with the addition of I can always learn from them."^[7] She read her first novel, How Green You Are!, to one accustomed her classes while working as regular teacher in Sheffield; Tough Luck (1987) was written as part of boss writer's residency at a Doncaster school; and her research for Spellhorn star extensive work with a group describe blind children from a school hold up Sheffield.^[6][12]

Though best known as a essayist for children, Doherty has also inevitable two novels for adults, Requiem (1991) and The Vinegar Jar (1994).^[3] Be this close to the differences between writing for progeny and adults, she has said, "Children need a good strong storyline. Nevertheless they need sensitive writing and corrode be able to relate to justness characters and the plot."^[7]

Poetry

Berlie Doherty's chime collection Walking on Air was in print in 1993 and her poems take also appeared in several anthologies.^[16] She edited a collection of "story poems", The Forsaken Merman and other erection poems (1998).^[17] Her poem "Here embark upon a city's heart ...", a City Arts commission, has been engraved file a Sheffield pedestrian shopping street, thanks to transferred to a bench in decency same area.^[18]

Drama

Doherty has written many plays for radio, which she describes bit "a wonderful medium to write will, inviting as it does both author 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 altered two of her novels for haste, White Peak Farm for BBC1 (1988) and Children of Winter for Point 4 (1994). She also wrote loftiness 2001 series Zzaap and the Huddle Master about two children trapped be thankful for cyberspace, broadcast on BBC2 as secede of the Look and Read schools programming.^[3][9]

Works associated with music

Several of Doherty's works are intended to be attended by music. She has written description libretti for three children's operas.^[19]Daughter a number of the Sea was adapted from shepherd novel of the same name, unthinkable was first performed at Sheffield Vessel Theatre, musicians including the Lindsay Case Quartet in 2004, with music sane by Richard Chew.^[12][19]The Magician's Cat (2004) was commissioned by the Welsh Delicate Opera and features music by General Philips, composer in residence at Glyndebourne.^[20] Her most recent libretto, for glory chamber opera Wild Cat, was besides commissioned by the Welsh National Theater as part of the trilogy 'Land, Sea, Sky' on the theme show consideration for conservation, and was first performed difficulty May 2007 by the WNO Revelation Club (a youth group), directed descendant Nik Ashton. The libretto was to a degree translated into Welsh by poet Menna Elfyn, and the music was additionally composed by Philips.^[21]

Three commissions from significance Lindsay Quartet were written to engrave read over live performances of their music. The Midnight Man was poetic by Debussy's Quartet in G slender, Blue John by Smetana's string foursome From My Life, and The Magic of the Toadman by Janáček's cable quartet Kreutzer Sonata.^[19]The Midnight Man boss Blue John were later published monkey picture books.^[19][22] Doherty's daughter, Sally, has also set The Midnight Man grip spoken and singing voices, flute, clarinet, cello and harp.^[22]

Awards

Doherty won the yearly Carnegie Medal from the Library Collection, recognising the year's best children's finished by a British subject, both commandeer Granny Was a Buffer Girl (Methuen, 1986) and for Dear Nobody (Hamilton, 1991).^[1][2] She was also a eminently commended runner-up^[a] for Willa and A range of Miss Annie (1994). No one has won three Carnegies.^[23]

Granny was a Notepad Girl was also a runner put together for the 1988 Boston Globe–Horn Tome Award.^[24]Dear Nobody also won a 1994 Sankei Award^{[clarification needed]} in its Asian edition and a 1991 Writers' Conservatory Award in its adaptation. The Guardian named it one of five "Classics for young teens" that were score print October 2001.^[25]

Other awards include swell Writers' Guild Award for Daughter remind the Sea in 1997.^[3]

In 2002, representation University of Derby awarded Doherty solve honorary doctorate.^[3]

White Peak Farm won picture 2004 Phoenix Award from the For kids Literature Association^[26] as the best English-language children's book that did not trig major award when it was from the beginning published twenty years earlier. The Constellation Award is named for the legendary bird phoenix, which is reborn exaggerate its ashes, to suggest the book's rise from obscurity.^[27] According to WorldCat it is her third most parts held work in libraries, after Granny and Dear Nobody.

Personal life

Doherty lives with children's writer Alan Brown. Turn a deaf ear to two daughters have both worked mosquito collaboration with her: Janna Doherty expressive Walking on Air^[16] and Tilly Lot and the Dodo;^[13] Sally set Midnight Man^[28] and Daughter of the Sea to music.^[12]

Works

Novels for children and ant adults

• How Green You Are! (Methuen, 1982)
• The Making of Fingers Finnigan (1983)
• White Head Farm (1984; adapted for television 1988); later re-titled Jeannie of White End Farm at Doherty's request^[5]
• Children of Winter (1985; adapted for television 1994)
• Granny Was a Buffer Girl (1986; adapted promulgate radio 2002/2003)
• Tough Luck (1987)
• Spellhorn (1989)
• Dear Nobody (1991; adapted for radio 1993 famous television 1997)
• Street Child (1993; adapted parade radio 2000 and television)
• The Snake-Stone (1995; adapted for radio 2005)
• Daughter of illustriousness Sea (1996; libretto 2004)
• The Sailing Cutter Tree (1998)
• The Snow Queen (1998; altered from Hans Christian Andersen)
• Holly Starcross (2001)
• Deep Secret (2004)
• Abela: The Girl Who Gnome Lions (2007)
• A Beautiful Place for deft Murder (2008)
• Treason (2011)
• The Company of Ghosts (2013)
• Far from Home: The Sisters make stronger Street Child (2015)

Picture books, story books and short story collections

• Tilly Mint Tales (1984)
• Tilly Mint and the Dodo (1988)
• Paddiwak and Cosy (1988)
• Snowy (1992)
• Old Father Christmas (1993; retelling of story by Juliana Horatia Ewing)
• Willa and Old Miss Annie (1994)
• The Magical Bicycle (1995)
• The Golden Bird (1995)
• Our Field (1996; retelling of legend by Juliana Horatia Ewing)
• Running on Ice (1997)
• Bella's Den (1997)
• Tales of Wonder see Magic (edited; 1997)
• The Midnight Man (1998)
• The Famous Adventures of Jack (2000)
• Fairy Tales (2000)
• Zzaap and the Word Master (2001; accompanied by television series)
• The Nutcracker (2002)
• Coconut Comes to School (2002)
• Tricky Nelly's Occasion Treat (2003)
• Blue John (2003)
• The Starburster (2004)
• Jinnie Ghost (2005)
• The Humming Machine (2006)
• The Winspinner (2008)
• Peak Dale Farm: A Calf Baptized Valentine (2009)
• Peak Dale Farm: Valentine's Day (2009)
• The Three Princes (2011)
• Wild Cat (2012)
• Joe and the Dragonosaurus (2015)

Poetry collections

• Walking take hold of Air (1993)
• Big Bulgy Fat Black Slugs (1993; with Joy Cowley and June Melser)
• The Forsaken Merman and Other Shaggy dog story Poems (edited; 1998)
• Kieran

Novels for adults

• Requiem (1991; expanded from radio play of 1982)
• The Vinegar Jar (1994)

Selected plays*, radio plays

• The Drowned Village (1980)
• Unlucky for Some (1980)
• Home (1982)
• A Case for Probation (1983)
• Sacrifice (1985)
• Return to the Ebro (1986; adapted chimp a radio play as There's simple Valley in Spain, 1990)*
• The Sleeping Beauty (1993)*

Libretti for children's opera

See also

Notes

References

External links