British children's and adult writer (born 1947)
Anne Fine OBE FRSL (born 7 December 1947) is an English writer. Although best known for children's books, she also writes for adults. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and she was appointed an OBE in 2003.[2]
Fine has written more than seventy children's books, including two winners of the annual Carnegie Medal and three highly commended runners-up.[3][a] For some of those five books she also won the Guardian Prize, one Smarties Prize, two Whitbread Awards, and she was twice the Children's Author of the Year.
For her contribution as a children's writer, Fine was a runner-up for the Hans Christian Andersen Medal in 1998.[4][5] From 2001 to 2003, she was the second Children's Laureate in the UK.[6]
Early life
Fine was born and raised in Leicester and educated in neighbouring midland counties of England. She attended Northampton High School and earned a degree in politics from the University of Warwick. She was married to the philosopher Kit Fine until they were divorced; she has now been with her partner Dick Warren for more than twenty years.[1] She currently lives in Barnard Castle, County Durham, England. She and Kit Fine have two daughters named Cordelia Fine and Ione Fine.
She has four sisters; her father was an electrical engineer and she grew up in Fareham, Hampshire. The eldest of the sisters is Elizabeth Arnold who also writes books for children; the three younger sisters were triplets. She studied History and Politics at university, got married, and then her daughter Ione was born. At age 24, she wrote her first book.[7]
Career
Describing the start of her writing career, Fine has written: “In 1971 my first daughter was born. Unable to get to the library in a snowstorm to change my library books, in desperation I sat down and started to write a novel. Clearly this was the right job for me, for I have never stopped writing for more than a few weeks since”.[8] In September 2010, Fine told The Daily Telegraph’s Jessica Salter that this first book lay under her bed after being rejected by two publishers, adding “Five years later I unearthed it and entered it in a competition where I was runner-up, and it was finally published in 1978”.[1]
Her books for older children include Madame Doubtfire (1987), a satirical novel[9]
that Twentieth Century Fox filmed as Mrs. Doubtfire, starring Robin Williams. Goggle-Eyes (Hamish Hamilton, 1989) was adapted for television by Deborah Hall for the BBC.
Her books for middle children include Bill's New Frock (Methuen, 1989) and How to Write Really Badly (1996).
Her work has been translated into 45 languages.[10]
In March 2014, Fine lent her support to the campaign Let Books Be Books, which aims to persuade publishers of children's books to stop labelling and promoting books as "for boys" or "for girls". She told UK newspaper The Guardian: "You'd think this battle would have been won decades ago. But even some seemingly bright and observant adults are buying into it again […] There are girls of all sorts, with all interests, and boys of all sorts with all interests. Just meeting a few children should make that obvious enough. But no, these idiotic notions are spouted so often they become a self-fulfilling societal straitjacket from which all our children suffer".[11]
Awards and nominations
The biennial Hans Christian Andersen Award conferred by the International Board on Books for Young People is the highest recognition available to a writer or illustrator of children's books. In 1998, Fine was one of five finalists for the writing award.[4][5]
She won the 1989 Carnegie Medal from the Library Association, recognising Goggle-Eyes as that year's best children's book,[12] and she was one of two highly commended runners-up for the same Medal with Bill's New Frock.[3][a] She also won the once-in-a-lifetime Guardian Prize for Goggle-Eyes[13] and the Smarties Prize in ages category 6–8 years for Bill's New Frock.
Three years later, she won the Carnegie Medal again for Flour Babies (Hamilton, 1992), which was also named the Whitbread Children's Book of the Year.
The Tulip Touch (Hamilton, 1996) was her second Whitbread winner and her second highly commended for the Carnegie.
Up on Cloud Nine (Doubleday, 2002) was the last highly commended Carnegie runner-up, a distinction then used 29 times in 24 years. Fine is one of seven authors to win two Carnegie Medals (1936–2012) and the only author of three Highly Commended books.[3][a]
Fine was the second Children's Laureate (2001–03)[14] and received the OBE for services to literature in the 2003 Queen's Birthday Honours List.[15]
- Awards[16]
- Runners-up, nominations, etc.
- 1984 Guardian shortlist – The Granny Project
- 1987 Guardian shortlist – Madame Doubtfire
- 1987 Whitbread shortlist – Madame Doubtfire
- 1989 Carnegie, highly commended – Bill's New Frock[3]
- 1993 Carnegie shortlist – The Angel of Nitshill Road
- 1996 Carnegie, highly commended – Tulip Touch[3]
- 2002 Carnegie, highly commended – Up on Cloud Nine[3]
- 2004 shortlist for the Red House Children's Book Award, Younger Readers – The More The Merrier
- 2006 Carnegie shortlist – The Road of Bones
- 2007 Nestlé Smarties Book Prize, ages 6–8, second place – Ivan the Terrible
- 2014 Carnegie shortlist - Blood Family
