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 and Into the Jungle, a sequel to Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book.

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