Catherine Fisher facts for kids

Catherine Fisher (born 1957) is a Welsh poet and children's novelist. She has also worked as a school and university teacher.

Work experience

Catherine Fisher has worked as a primary-school teacher and as an archaeologist. She also taught writing for children at the University of Glamorgan.She has been a full-time writer of fiction and poetry since 2002.

Writing

Fisher has published four poetry collections with Seren Books: Immrama (1988), The Unexplored Ocean (c. 1994), Altered States (1999) and The Bramble King (2019). She has also published a pamphlet, Folklore (2003), with Smith/Doorstop Books, and many poems in magazines and anthologies. The collection Immrama won the Welsh Arts Council Young Writers' Prize in 1989. She won the Cardiff International Poetry Competition in the same year with her poem 'Marginalia'.

Since the late 1980s, Fisher has been writing children's fantasy, both Young Adult, and middle grade. Her novels of this kind have been translated into over 30 languages, and many of her works have won or been shortlisted for literary awards. She has twice won the Welsh Books Council Tir na n'Og prize for fiction in English, with The Candle Man (2000) and The Clockwork Crow (2015) Her young adult fantasies Incarceron and Sapphique were New York Times bestsellers and Times Book of the Year. The Oracle, the first volume of a trilogy mixing Egyptian and Greek myth, was shortlisted for the Whitbread Prize. The Clockwork Crow, first of an acclaimed trilogy for middle grade, an enchanting reworking of Welsh fairylore and Victorian Gothic,was shortlisted for the Blue Peter Prize. Fisher's work mixes myth, legend and folktale, with vibrant characters and language that is precise and evocative.

Awards and honors