Susan Cooper has been writing for over 30 years. In this time she has written numerous newspaper articles, books for children and adults, screenplays for TV, the cinema and a Broadway play. As a writer she is hard to classify, what is universally accepted is that she is a writer with extraordinary gifts.
Born in Burnham, Buckinghamshire, England in May 1935, Susan Cooper attended Slough High School before going up to Oxford University. At Somerville College she read English. During her time at Oxford she was the first woman ever to edit the University magazine, Cherwell. After graduating with an MA in English, she began work as a reporter on the Atticus Column of London's The Sunday Times (her first boss was Ian Fleming). She later became a feature writer.
Her first books were born during this period. Written after work and at weekends, her first was a so-called science fiction novel, Mandrake. And in response to a publishing house competition for a children's adventure story, Over Sea, Under Stone.
In 1963 she left England to marry an American, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and went "rather nervously" to live in the USA. She wrote two more books for adults: a study of America, Behind the Golden Curtain and a biography of J.B. Priestley, Portrait of An Author.
A further novel, the autobiographical Dawn of Fear published in 1970, was written before continuing the Dark Is Rising series. Dawn of Fear is a solitary, looking at the experience of living in war-time Britain through the eyes of a child. The book is almost totally autobiographical except for the fact, as the author herself states, "I turned myself into a boy".
It is, however The Dark Is Rising series which is synonymous with the name Susan Cooper. The first in the series, Over Sea, Under Stone, is perhaps more readily identified as a family adventure story than the other DR books - but it is much more than that. In Over Sea, Under Stone we have the first insights into the battle between the Dark and the Light and the introduction to the Arthurian and Celtic myths and legends which permeate the whole of the sequence. After completing Over Sea, Under Stone the reader has experienced only a taster of what is to come in the remaining stories. During the dozen or so years that
In this day and age, writing is being portrayed through various mediums, such as film and television. Some of those portrayals depict writing as both good and bad depending on the situation that is present. Authors such as, by E. Shelley Reid, Kevin Roozen, and Anne Lamott all write about important writing concepts that are being depicted in films, like Freedom Writers. The film Freedom Writers shows a positive and accurate portrayal of writing in the sense that the writers should have a connection to what they are writing about, writing is a form of communication, and that writing does not have to be perfect the first time.
involved troubling situations. Look at how she grew up. The book starts off during a time of Jim
Hansberry, Lorraine. A Raisin in the Sun. Literature and the Writing Process. Elizabeth McMahan, Susan X. Day, and Robert Funk. 6th ed. Upper Saddle River: Prentice, 2002.
Susan Elizabeth George is a competent British author with a rich background. She wrote many distinguished books and won numerous awards, which all began when she was a teacher at El Toro High School. She writes mystery murders, which gained widespread popularity. From an article from The New York Times, Mel Gussow described George as ''a master of the English mystery, with an ear for local language and an eye for the inner workings of Scotland Yard'' (Gussow). George has a productive and fulfilling life accompanied by her many successful novels and awards.
Joyce Carol Oates was born on June 16th, 1938, in Lockport, New York. Raised on her parent’s farm in a rural area that had been hit by the Great Depression, she attended the same one-room school house as her mother. As a young child, Oates developed a love of literature and writing well beyond her years. She was very encouraged by her parents and grandparents to pursue her love of writing and as a teenager she was given her first typewriter. This was when her passion finally came to life. In 1953 at the age of only 15, she wrote her first novel about the rehabilitation of a drug dealer, which was later turned down by the publisher because the topic was not suitable for a young audience. Although her novels do focus on the horrors of society, her childhood growing up was no reflection of that. Oates has admitted that her childhood was “dull, ordinary and nothing people would be interested in. Oates continued writing throughout high school and earned a scholarship to attend Syracuse University. There she graduated at the top of her class in 1960, and in...
In 1942 Flannery became a student at Georgia State College for Women. There she became the art editor of the college newspaper and editor of the Campus Literary Quarterly. In the fall of 1945 she continued her studies at the Iowa School for Writ...
The Atypical Woman in a Typical World Do many people know who Anne Spencer is? Probably not. Anne Spencer was a Harlem Renaissance poet who actually lived in Lynchburg, Virginia. She immensely enjoyed working in her garden and spending time in Edankraal, a small cottage in her garden where she wrote most of her poetry. Though Anne was a hard worker, she definitely was not a typical woman of the early 20th century.
It is common to hear that writers usually have a knack for reading, especially from a young age. Francine Prose is no different from them. This lifelong love of reading has contributed to Francine Prose's need to write (Bolick). Francine Prose has written just about thirty books and other literary works, yet she is by no means done yet (Hodara). The childhood of Francine Prose has greatly contributed to her success as a writer, not just from her love of reading, but by the gift of using her greatest sense; Her hearing. (Bolick; Carrigan).
Susan learned to read and write at the age of three. In 1826, the Anthony’s moved from Massachusetts to Battensville, New York. Where Susan attended a district school, when the teacher refused to teach Susan long division, she was taken out of school and taught in home school set up by her father. A woman teacher, Mary Perkins, ran the school. Perkins offered a new image of womanhood to Susan and her sisters.
Sophie Treadwell was born on October 3, 1885 in Stockton, California. She is known mostly as a playwright, but wrote in various other genres also. Her written works not only include plays, but also books and novels, fiction and non-fiction. Her journalism career was quite successful. Her commentaries and articles were always captivating to the public eye. Sophie frequently followed sensational stories in the news, some of which gained much acclaim, one being her interview with Pancho Villa.
Anne McCaffrey is one of science fiction’s most popular authors. After her novel, The White Dragon, (1978) became one of the first science fiction novels to ever hit The New York Times bestseller list, Anne’s work remained a staple of bestseller lists for decades.
She visited Kentucky, saw the life of slavery, she is affected by strong anti slavery sentiment father school. This feeling into her novels tone. In 1850, with her husband moved to Maine, where the discussion of anti slavery made her very excited, so spare time to write the novel ...
helped the Frank family survive during their two years in hiding. Her book is a
married Colonel Archibald Christie. They had one daughter, whose name was Rosalind, and then they divorced in 1928. She started writing in 1920, and her first book published was The Mysterious Affair at Styles. She wrote And Then There Were None in 1939. Agatha Christie has become one of the most famous writer of mystery novels. And Then There Were None is a murder mystery type book.
and Other Greats : Lessons from the All-star Writer's Workshop. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2006. Print.