Gillian Cross
- London
- LAW (Lucas Alexander Whitley)
Biography
Gillian Cross was born in London in 1945, and studied at Somerville College, Oxford and the University of Sussex.
She is the author of several children's books, including the popular 'Demon Headmaster' stories, comprising of: The Demon Headmaster (1982); The Prime Minister's Brain, later republished as The Demon Headmaster and the Prime Minister's Brain (1985); Hunky Parker is Watching You (1994), later republished as The Revenge of the Demon Headmaster (1994); The Demon Headmaster Strikes Again (1996); The Demon Headmaster Takes Over (1997); and Facing The Demon Headmaster (2002). These books were made into a successful BBC television series, and a musical, which first went on tour in 1998.
Her first children's book was The Runaway (1979) and this has been followed by many other novels of wide-ranging subject matter, including Born of the Sun (1983), set in South America; On The Edge (1984); A Map of Nowhere (1988); and The Dark Behind the Curtain (1985); all shortlisted for several awards. Wolf (1990), won the 1990 Carnegie Medal, and The Great Elephant Chase (1992), won the 1992 Whitbread Children's Book Award and the Nestlé Smarties Prize.
Her recent books The Dark Ground (2003), The Black Room (2005), and The Nightmare Game (2006), form The Lost trilogy, a fantasy adventure series. She has also published a picture book for younger children, Brother Aelred's Feet (2007). Her latest books are Where I Belong (2007) and After Tomorrow (2013).
Gillian Cross lives with her family in Warwickshire.
Bibliography
Awards
Author statement
I write because I have always been curious about what it would feel like to be someone else, in a different situation. Fiction is a wonderful way of exploring that. As a child, I did it by dressing up and imagining adventures for myself. Then I discovered that writing the adventures down made them more vivid and absorbing, because I had to sharpen up my imaginary world if I wanted other people to visualise it. Sharpening up the imaginary world helped me to understand the real one better and sparked off more questions. The older I get, the more my curiosity grows, and every book I write is a new exploration.
