Helen Dunmore

 ( 1952 Births ) 

Helen Dunmore FRSL (12 December 1952 – 5 June 2017) was a British poet, novelist, and short story and children's writer.

Her best known works include the novels Zennor in Darkness, A Spell of Winter and The Siege, and her last book of poetry Inside the Wave. She won the inaugural Orange Prize for Fiction, the National Poetry Competition, and posthumously the Costa Book Award.

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Biography Dunmore was born in Beverley, Yorkshire, in 1952, the second of four children of Betty ( née Smith) and Maurice Dunmore. She attended Sutton High School, London Sutton High School Magazine, 1965 and 1967. (Poems published in 1965 and 1967, and prize awarded for History and English listed in 1967 magazine.) and Nottingham Girls' High School, then direct grant grammar schools.

She studied English at the University of York, and lived in Finland for two years (1973–75) and worked as a teacher. She lived after that in Bristol. Dunmore was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature (FRSL). Some of Dunmore's children's books are included in reading schemes for use in schools.

In March 2017, she published her last novel, Birdcage Walk, as well as an article about mortality for The Guardian written after she was diagnosed with terminal cancer. She died on 5 June 2017. Her final poetry collection Inside the Wave, published in April 2017 shortly before her death, posthumously won the Poetry and overall Book of the Year awards in the 2017 Costa Book Awards.

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Personal life Dunmore's husband Frank Charnley, whom she married in 1980, is a lawyer. Dunmore had a son, daughter and stepson, and three grandchildren at the time of her death.

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Awards and honours

• 1987: Poetry Book Society Choice, The Raw Garden
• 1994: McKitterick Prize, Zennor in Darkness
• 1996: Orange Prize (inaugural winner), A Spell of Winter
• 1990: Cardiff International Poetry Prize
  (2026). 9780521819466, Cambridge University Press. . ISBN 9780521819466
• 1997: T. S. Eliot Prize, shortlist, Bestiary
• 2010: Man Booker Prize, longlist, The Betrayal
• 2010: National Poetry Competition winner, "The Malarkey"
• 2015: Walter Scott Prize, shortlist, The Lie
• 2017 (posthumously): Costa Book Awards Poetry and Book of the Year Awards, Inside the Wave

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Bibliography

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Novels

• Zennor in Darkness (1993, McKitterick Prize 1994)
• Burning Bright (1994)
• A Spell of Winter (1995, Orange Prize 1996)
• Talking to the Dead (1996)
• Your Blue-Eyed Boy (1998)
• With your Crooked Heart (1999)
• The Siege (2001, shortlisted for the Whitbread Novel of the Year Award and the Orange Prize 2002)
• Mourning Ruby (2003). Retrieved 5 June 2017.
• House of Orphans (2006)
• Counting the Stars (2008)
• The Betrayal (2010, longlisted for the Man Booker prize)
• The Greatcoat (2012) ()
• The Lie (2014)
• Exposure (2016) ()

:An "Exclusive edition for independent bookshops" () includes a 14-page essay "On Reading"

(2026). 9781786330000, Hutchnson. . ISBN 9781786330000

Title page of essay on p 395, text of essay on pp. 397–410. Dustjacket bears the words "Exclusive edition for independent bookshops"

• Birdcage Walk (2017, longlisted for the Walter Scott Prize 2018)

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Short story collections

• Love of Fat Men (1997)
• Ice Cream (2000)
• Rose, 1944 (2005)
• Girl, Balancing and Other Stories (2018)

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Young adult books

• Zillah and Me!
• The Lilac Tree (first published as Zillah and Me) (2004)
• The Seal Cove (first published as The Zillah Rebellion) (2004)
• The Silver Bead (2004)
• The Ingo Chronicles
• Ingo (2005)
• The Tide Knot (2006)
• The Deep (2007)
• The Crossing of Ingo (2008)
• Stormswept (2012)

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Children's books

• Going to Egypt (1992)
• In the Money (1995)
• Go Fox (1996)
• Fatal Error (1996)
• Amina's Blanket (1996)
• Allie's Apples (1997)
• Bestiary (1997)
• Clyde's Leopard (1998)
• Great-Grandma's Dancing Dress (1998)
• Brother Brother, Sister Sister (1999)
• Allie's Rabbit (1999)
• Allie's Away (2000)
• Aliens Don't Eat Bacon Sandwiches (2000)
• The Ugly Duckling (2001)
• Tara's Tree House (2003)
• The Ferry Birds (2010)
• The Islanders (2011)
• The Lonely Sea Dragon (2013)

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Poetry collections

• The Apple Fall (Bloodaxe Books, 1983)
• The Sea Skater (Bloodaxe Books, 1986)
• The Raw Garden (Bloodaxe Books, 1988)
• Short Days, Long Nights: New & Selected Poems (Bloodaxe Books, 1991)
• Recovering a Body (Bloodaxe Books, 1994)
• Secrets (The Bodley Head, 1994) children's
• Bestiary (Bloodaxe Books, 1997)
• Out of the Blue: Poems 1975–2001 (Bloodaxe Books, 2001)
• Snollygoster and Other Poems (Scholastic Press, 2001) children's
• Glad of these times (Bloodaxe Books, 2007)
• The Malarkey (Bloodaxe Books, 2012)
• Inside the Wave (Bloodaxe Books, 2017)

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External links

• HarperCollins Canada site

Categories: 1952 Births, 2017 Deaths, 20th-century British Novelists, 20th-century English Women Writers, 21st-century British Novelists, 21st-century English Women Writers, Alumni Of The University Of York, British Children's Writers, British Women Children's Writers, British Writers Of Young Adult Literature, Deaths From Cancer In England, English Women Poets, Fellows Of The Royal Society Of Literature, People Educated At Nottingham Girls' High School, People From Beverley, British Women Writers Of Young Adult Literature, Writers From Bristol, Writers From The East Riding Of Yorkshire, Women's Prize For Fiction Winners, 20th-century British Women Novelists, 21st-century British Women Novelists, 21st-century English Writers

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