Rachel Anderson

Rachel Anderson (born 1943) is an English journalist and author best known for her children's books. Her work often features the positive portrayal of characters with learning disabilities, and themes of social injustice and alienation. She was married for 45 years to the writer and translator David Bradby. Her mother was the writer Verily Anderson.

For the novel Paper Faces, published by OUP in 1991, Anderson won the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize, a once-in-a-lifetime book award judged by a panel of British children's writers. Rachel Anderson is the second of the five children born to Verily Anderson and Captain Donald Anderson, her siblings including the author and health activist Janie Hampton.

Leaving school at the age of 16, Rachel Anderson initially became a journalist, working for BBC Radio, newspapers and women's magazines. Her first book – Pineapple, an adult novel – was published in 1965, in the same week that she and David Bradby were married.

Rachel Anderson has four children and "a range of grandchildren" 1992: Guardian Children's Fiction Prize for Paper Faces (one of two winners)