Katherine Rundell 

One of the most inventive and original authors of children’s fiction writing today, Katherine Rundell’s writing career was spearheaded by Waterstones who awarded her The Waterstones Children’s Book Prize in 2014 for her novel Rooftoppers.

Born in Kent, Rundell grew up in Zimbabwe and her experiences of her life there and of leaving to move to Brussels when she was 14 were a strong influence on her first novel, The Girl Savage, written when she was just 21.

A fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, Rundell wrote Rooftoppers - a novel influenced by her own hobby of clambering on Oxford’s college roofs - whilst studying for her masters. She followed this with The Wolf Wilder, The Explorer, which won the Costa Book Award, One Christmas Wish, The Good Thieves and Into the Jungle, a sequel to Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book.

In 2023, Rundell published her first foray into children’s fantasy Impossible Creatures, which was lauded as an instant classic and shortlisted for Waterstones Book of the Year 2023.

In addition to her stellar writing for children, Rundell has also penned two highly acclaimed non-fiction books for adults; The Golden Mole, which was shortlisted for the Waterstones Book of the Year 2022, and Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne, which scooped the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction 2022.