Malorie Blackman


Malorie Blackman is a British writer who held the position of Children's Laureate from 2013 to 2015. She primarily writes literature and television drama for children and young adults. She has used science fiction to explore social and ethical issues. Her critically and popularly acclaimed Noughts and Crosses series uses the setting of a fictional dystopia to explore racism. Her book Pig Heart Boy sold out within a week of publishing it.

Early life

Blackman was born in Clapham, London. Her parents were both from Barbados. At school, she wanted to be an English teacher, but she grew up to become a systems programmer instead. She earned an HNC at Thames Polytechnic and is a graduate of the National Film and Television School.
She married Neil Morrison in 1992 and their daughter was born in 1995.

Author

Blackman had her book "New Windmills Spring" sold out within a week of publishing it. Ever since, she has written more than 60 children's books, including novels and short story collections, and also television scripts and a stage play..
Her work has won over 15 awards. Blackman's television scripts include episodes of the long-running children's drama Byker Grove as well as television adaptations of her novels Whizziwig and Pig-Heart Boy. She became the first person of colour writer to work on Doctor Who in its entire history. Her books have been translated into over 15 languages including Spanish, Welsh, German, Japanese, Chinese and French.
Blackman's award-winning Noughts & Crosses series, exploring love, racism and violence, is set in a fictional dystopia. Explaining her choice of title, in a 2007 interview for the BBC's Blast website, Blackman said that noughts and crosses is "one of those games that nobody ever plays after childhood, because nobody ever wins". In an interview for The Times, Blackman said that before writing Noughts & Crosses, her protagonists' ethnicities had never been central to the plots of her books. She has also said, "I wanted to show black children just getting on with their lives, having adventures, and solving their dilemmas, like the characters in all the books I read as a child."
Blackman eventually decided to address racism directly. She reused some details from her own experience, including an occasion when she needed a plaster and found they were designed to be inconspicuous only on white people's skin. The Times interviewer Amanda Craig speculated about the delay for the Noughts & Crosses series to be published in the United States: "though there was considerable interest, 9/11 killed off the possibility of publishing any book describing what might drive someone to become a terrorist". Noughts and Crosses is now available in the US published under the title Black & White.
Noughts & Crosses was No. 61 on the Big Read list, a 2003 BBC survey to find "The Nation's Best-Loved Book", with more votes than A Tale of Two Cities, several Terry Pratchett novels and Lord of the Flies.
She was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 2008 Birthday Honours.
In June 2013, Blackman was announced as the new Children's Laureate, succeeding Julia Donaldson..

Personal life

Malorie Blackman lives with her husband Neil and daughter Elizabeth in Kent, England. In her free time, she likes to play her piano, compose, play computer games and write poetry. She is the subject of a biography for children by Verna Wilkins.
In March 2014, Blackman joined other prominent authors in supporting the Let Books Be Books campaign, which seeks to stop children’s books being labelled as 'for girls' or 'for boys'.
In August 2014, Malorie Blackman was one of 200 public figures who were signatories to a letter to The Guardian opposing Scottish independence in the run-up to September's referendum on that issue.

Works

Published works

Novels for young adults and children

Her novel Operation Gadgetman! was also adapted into a 1996 TV movie directed by Jim Goddard and starring Marina Sirtis.

Stage plays

Body of work

For ''Hacker'' (1995)

For ''Pig-Heart Boy''