Susan Cooper, uploaded by slowking. Retrieved from Wikipedia, licensed under GFDL 1.2 (accessed: January 5, 2022).
Susan Cooper
, b. 1935
Susan Cooper is an English author, born in Burnham, Buckinghamshire, England. With a childhood spread across WWII Cooper delighted in reading when safety concerns disallowed herself and her younger brother to play outside. She earned a B.A. Degree in English Literature from the University of Oxford, at which she was the first woman to edit the undergraduate newspaper Cherwell. Whilst at university she was taught by both J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. Post-graduation, Cooper worked as a reporter for The Sunday Times, with her boss here being Ian Fleming, and her writing then stemmed from journalism into children’s literature as well as adult fiction. Emigration to the United States allowed for her novels to reach international recognition and here she accumulated many literary awards such as the Newbery Medal, The ALA Margaret A. Edwards Award, and the Tir na n-Og Award. Once in the United States Cooper ventured into writing screenplays for adults and has since received two Writers Guild Awards and two Emmy nominations. She was on the board of the National Children’s Book and Literacy Alliance from 2006 to 2012, a non-profit organisation that goes toward advocating literacy, literature and libraries across the US. In April 2017, Cooper gave the fifth annual Tolkien Lecture at Pembroke College, Oxford, and spoke on the role of fantasy literature in a contemporary society.
Sources:
Official Publisher Page, (accessed: July 22, 2019).
Reading Rockets: A Video Interview With Susan Cooper (accessed: September 1, 2019).
Young Adult Library Services Association (accessed: July 22, 2019).
Hand, Elizabeth, Cooper, Susan 2003, 239–244.
Bio prepared by Elena Louverdis, Victoria University of Wellington, louverelen@myvuw.ac.nz
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