Siobhan Dowd

Works Dowd edited three anthologies in the Threatened Literature Series for the Freedom to Write Committee of the PEN American Center: This Prison Where I Live (Cassell, 1996) and, jointly with Ian Hancock and Rajko Djuric, The Roads of the Roma: a PEN Anthology of Gypsy Writers (University of Hertfordshire Press, 1998 and 2004). Although not listed as an official editor, she edited "Inked Over, Ripped Out: Burmese Storytellers and the Censors" (Silkworm Books, 1994), which was translated by Anna J. Allott and which featured stories by seven Burmese writers.

An invitation by Tony Bradman to contribute a story about an Irish "Pavee" (gypsy/traveller) to his collection of short stories for children about racism, Skin Deep (Puffin, 2004), led to a new career as an author of children's books. Dowd was inspired by this success to continue writing for children and developed close friendships with two established children's authors, Lee Weatherly and Fiona Dunbar. They would meet regularly to chat about their work and discuss children's literature.

Completed novels Dowd's first novel was A Swift Pure Cry, a 2006 novel about a teenager named Shell, a girl who lives in County Cork, Ireland. It won the 2007 Branford Boase Award and the Eilís Dillon Award. It was short-listed for the Carnegie Medal, and the Branford Boase Award in June 2007.

The London Eye Mystery was Dowd's second novel, published by David Fickling in June 2007. It won the NASEN/TES Special Educational Needs Children's Book Award, was longlisted for the 2008 Carnegie Medal, and was shortlisted for the Red House Children's Book Award, Doncaster Book Award, and Southwark Schools Book Award. In May 2008, Dowd was posthumously awarded the €10,000 Bisto Book of the Year prize for The London Eye Mystery. In January 2009 it won the Salford Children's Book Award, and January 2010 it won the Dolly Gray Children's Literature Award.

At the time of her death she had completed two more novels that have since been published. Bog Child (February 2008) won the Carnegie Medal (above) and made the Guardian Award shortlist. It features a boy who makes a horrible discovery digging peat in 1980s Ireland: the body of a young girl who may have been murdered. Dowd had undertaken at least one more children's novel before her death, about a young boy coming to terms with his mother's terminal illness. She had discussed it and contracted to write it with editor Denise Johnstone-Burt at Walker Books, who also worked with Patrick Ness, author of the acclaimed Chaos Walking trilogy. Walker arranged for Ness to write the story; later, Walker and Ness arranged for Jim Kay to illustrate it; and A Monster Calls (May 2011) was published before Ness and Kay met. In 2012 it won both the Carnegie Medal (Ness) and the companion Kate Greenaway Medal (Kay) as the year's best children's/young adult book published in the UK, a double-award unique in more than fifty years.

Personal life Dowd was married twice. Her first marriage to Mial Pagan broke down in the early 1990s and she subsequently moved to New York City, where she worked for PEN American Center. Dowd spent seven years in New York until she returned to London in 1997, to spend more time with her family. In 2000 she met Geoff Morgan, a librarian at Oxford Brookes University. They married in March 2001 in Wales.

In September 2004, Dowd was diagnosed with advanced breast cancer. In spite of this, she continued to write prolifically. In her last year of life she developed a friendship with the children's author Meg Rosoff,

Dowd died of breast cancer on 21 August 2007, aged 47. She was survived by her husband. She was interred in the graveyard at St Margaret's Church in Binsey, Oxfordshire.