Judy Allen
As a child
Judy Allen grew up near the sea in Southsea. She loved the beach, especially in winter when it was empty, but never learnt to swim. She always wanted to write and her mother, who wrote plays for the stage and for radio, encouraged her. She liked reading (fiction, natural history and explorers’ tales), roller-skating and writing stories. Her earliest stories were about children getting lost in a wood and hearing strange sounds and glimpsing mysterious movements – but she never knew how to end them.
As an adult
After Judy left school, she had several different jobs, working in the toy department in a large store, in a literary agency, and for two different publishers. When she was first published she still had to keep on the day job, and it was some years before she could become a full time writer. She says that when she gets stuck partway through a book she wonders why on earth she ever became a writer, but when a book is going well there’s nothing on earth she’d rather be doing.
As an artist
Judy has written more than fifty books, both fiction and non-fiction, for adults as well as for children. She has also written radio plays and dramatized other people’s books for radio. She has won the Whitbread Award and the Friends of the Earth ‘Earthworm’ Award. She says, “When I write I don’t try to create new worlds but to look at what is strange and magical about the world we think we know.”
Things you didn't know about Judy Allen
- She has ridden down the Grand Canyon on a mule.
- She once stroked a tarantula.
- As a child, she couldn't teach her budgie to talk, but the dog taught him to bark.
- She can't sing in tune.
- She has a small pond and a smaller pond, both with frogs in them.
- She's good at untying knots.
- She once had a cat who ate with his paw and was frightened of birds.
- When she was seven, the same cat and his friend taught her to climb an apple tree in the garden.
- She would like to live near a waterfall.
- Er...