SEPTEMBER'S AUTHOR by Sharon Tregenza

JOAN AIKEN

Joan Delano Aiken was born on September 4th in Mermaid Street, Rye, Sussex, England. 

 

Joan Aiken 1924-2004

It was no surprise that Joan Aiken became an author, she was surrounded by writers all her young life. Her American father, the poet Conrad Aiken, won the Pulitzer Prize and her mother, Canadian Jessie McDonald Aiken, was also an author. Later her mother remarried and Joan's stepfather was yet another writer - Martin Armstrong.

Aiken was raised in a rural area and home schooled until she was 12. Her mother often read to her from the works of Dickens, Scott, Twain and other popular authors and it was here that Joan learned to love stories of adventure. She was alone much of the time and amused herself by creating imaginary worlds.

She married Ronald George Brown in 1945 and they had two children, John Sebastian and Elizabeth Delano.

Her first success as an author was when, in 1941, the BBC broadcast some of her short stories on their Children's Hour programme.

Aiken began writing The Wolves of Willoughby Chase in 1952 but her husband became ill and she put the book aside. He died in 1955. After working as a copy editor for several years she completed the book in 1963. It won the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award.

Many books later The Wolves of Willoughby Chase is still considered Aiken's most popular work. The series is set in an alternative history when James 11 was never deposed. Aiken also plays with the geography of a London where wolves have invaded the country from Europe via the Channel Tunnel.

Aiken married the New York landscape painter Julius Goldstein in 1976. They divided their time between Sussex and New York. He died in 2001.

Interesting Facts about Joan Aiken:

1. She wrote more than a hundred books in several different genres.

2. She was a life-long fan of ghost stories.

3. Her first home, when she was married to Ronald Brown, was a converted bus.

4. She wrote stories for the much-loved BBC's Jackanory series.

Joan Aiken died aged 79 at her home in Sussex on January 4th, 2004.

Email: sharontregenza@gmail.com

Website: www.sharontregenza.com

Not Too Tidy by Joan Lennon

I've had two quotations kicking around in my mind.  The first is by Joan Aiken, on writing for children: 

"It is the writer's duty to demonstrate to children that the world is not a simple place.  The world is an infinitely rich, strange, confusing, wonderful, cruel, mysterious, beautiful, inexplicable riddle."  The Way to Write for Children.

And the second is from an article by Tim Lott in The Guardian:

"For if I am static as a fully grown adult, then I am doing something wrong. I am holding on to myself too tightly, just as some parents hold on to their children too tightly. Life, yes, is loss and letting go. But without that loss and letting go, it would be like a plastic flower. Indestructible, but ultimately valueless." Life is about loss and letting go.


I think these quotes have taken up residence in my head because a) I am in the process of writing a book with loss and letting go as inescapable aspects of the plot, and b) I am drawn to open-ended endings in my novels.  Riddles that have more to them than can be contained in one story.  I don't mean setting things up for a sequel.  I mean after the book is finished, the world of the story carries on, like Alec Guinness in the last moments of The Man in the White Suit. 

And then, coming as a third, I read this quote from Madeleine L'Engle:

"I believe that good questions are more important than answers, and the best children's books ask questions, and make the readers ask questions. And every new question is going to disturb someone's universe."  Do I Dare Disturb the Universe?

A tidy summing-up paragraph is called for, now, connecting these thoughts, but I don't know exactly what to put in it.  So perhaps I'll end by inviting conclusions, comments, resonances from you?   



Joan Lennon's website.
Joan Lennon's blog.
Walking Mountain.