Biographical Sketch

Malorie Blackman was born in London in 1962 and has spent most of her life there. She went to Honor Oak Grammar School and then went to Huddersfield for a course in business studies. After suffering appendicitis in her first term, she ended up studying computer science at Thames Polytechnic.

Unusually for a children's author, her background is as a database manager. Her first book was Not So Stupid! for the Women's Press. She gave up her computing job in 1990, the same year that first book was published, and has been a full-time writer ever since.

Her books have won five awards to date: the W H Smiths Mind Boggling Book Award for Hacker (1994); the Young Telegraph Childrens Book of the Year award (1994) for the same book; the Young Telegraph Children's Book of the Year award for Thief (1996); the Stockport childrens book of the year award (1997) for A.N.T.I.D.O.T.E; and the Excelle/Voice Readers Children's Writer of the year award 1997.