Marita Conlon McKenna
Marita Conlon McKenna is an award winning Irish writer of both adult and children’s fiction. Her first book ‘Under the Hawthorn Tree,’ which was set during Ireland’s Great Famine, has become a children’s classic and is part of the international best-selling ‘The Children of the Famine’ series.
Her new children’s book ‘Fairy Hill’ is full of magic and mystery and was inspired by W.B Yeats Poem ‘The Stolen Child‘. Her other best- selling children’s books are ‘Wildflower Girl’, ‘Fields of Home,’ ‘The Blue Horse, ‘Safe Harbour’, ‘No goodbye’, In Deep Dark Wood, and ‘A Girl called Blue’. Her adult novels include ‘The Magdalen’ and ‘Rebel Sisters, and ‘The Hungry Road..
She is a winner of the of the International Reading Association Award ( U.S) and The Bisto Children’s Book of the Year Award ( Ireland), Kalbach Klapperschlange, German Children’s Choice Book Award Reading Association of Ireland Award, IBBY-White Raven Book Choice, The Burke Medal (Trinity College Hist. Soc. ) for her contribution to Discourse through the Arts. Her work has been adapted for stage, film and TV. She is a former Chair Person of Irish PEN and lives in Dublin.