Ann Downer
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Ann Downer | |
|---|---|
| Born | November 28, 1960 Arlington, Virginia, U.S. |
| Died | November 19, 2015 (aged 54) Boston, Massachusetts, U.S. |
| Occupation | Writer |
| Nationality | American |
| Genre | Fantasy literature |
Ann Downer (November 28, 1960 – November 19, 2015) was an American writer, principally of fantasy novels for children and young adults, as well as short fiction and poetry.
Biography[edit]
Ann Downer was born in Arlington, Virginia in 1960 and grew up in Manila and Bangkok and recalled avidly reading fantasy fiction.[1]
Her first published work was a trilogy published in the late 1980s and early 1990s (The Spellkey, The Glass Salamander, and The Books of the Keepers), collected in a revised edition in 1995 as The Spellkey Trilogy. A second series for middle-grade readers, begun in 2003 with the novel Hatching Magic, continues with The Dragon of Never-Was (2006). The Spellkey series is high fantasy, taking place wholly in an invented world and chronicling a good-versus-evil story of two foundlings, a stableboy and an ostracized seer. Hatching Magic and its sequel, The Dragon of Never-Was, are contemporary fantasies with elements of time travel. The series follows a young girl, Theodora Oglethorpe, as she discovers a world of wizardry and magic. While Downer's books are frequently compared to the work of Patricia A. McKillip and Diana Wynne Jones,[citation needed] she has cited the influence of Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea books and the Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander in shaping her outlook and prose style.[citation needed]
She was diagnosed with ALS in 2014 and died on 19 November 2015 in Boston, MA.[2]
Bibliography[edit]
Spellkey series
- The Spellkey (1987), jacket by Caldecott-medal winner David Wiesner, also a UK paperback edition from Futura/Macmillan.
- The Glass Salamander (1989), jacket by Caldecott-medal winner David Wiesner
- The Books of the Keepers (1993)
All three books were collected into a paperback omnibus edition, The Spellkey Trilogy, published by Baen Books in 1995.
Hatching Magic series U.S. edition jackets by Omar Rayyan
- Hatching Magic (2003; Scholastic Book Club selection; translated into German, Czech, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese, Polish, Thai, and Spanish; additional languages pending)
- The Dragon of Never-Was (2006)
Other Fiction
- "Somnus’s Fair Maid" (short-listed for the James Tiptree Jr. prize), a Regency retelling of the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale, in Black Thorn, White Rose, edited by Terri Windling and Ellen Datlow
- Short stories and poetry in Gargoyle Magazine in the late 1980s, including excerpts from an unpublished novel.
- "Bread-and-Butterflies" in Alice Redux (2006), a collection of short fiction inspired by Lewis Carroll and edited by Richard Peabody.
References[edit]
- ^ "Ann Downer: Biography". Simon and Schuster. Archived from the original on 23 December 2009. Retrieved 3 March 2010.
- ^ "Ann Downer-Hazell". The Somerville Journal.
External links[edit]
- Author blog
- Bibliography on fantasticfiction.co.uk
- Ann Downer at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
- 1960 births
- 2015 deaths
- 20th-century American novelists
- 21st-century American novelists
- American fantasy writers
- American children's writers
- American women novelists
- Smith College alumni
- Harvard University staff
- American women children's writers
- American women science fiction and fantasy writers
- 20th-century American women writers
- 21st-century American women writers
- Neurological disease deaths in Massachusetts
- Deaths from motor neuron disease in the United States