Malorie Blackman Biography and latest books by Malorie Blackman

Malorie Blackman is an author of 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 & Crosses series uses the setting of a fictional dystopia to explore a topic as crucial as racism.

Malorie Blackman was born on 8 February 1962. While at Marlborough College, in Wiltshire, she wanted to be an English teacher but grew up to become a systems programmer. She earned a HNC at Thames Polytechnic and is a graduate of the National Film and Television School.

Blackman married her Scottish husband Neil in the 1990s and their daughter Elizabeth was born in 1995.  Blackman has described herself, "I\'m just Malorie Blackman – a black woman writer." Her private school education was funded through a series of grants for her "exceptional writing" and her parents funded the rest through a few low-paid jobs. This influenced Blackman\'s first book, Not So Stupid, which was a collection of horror and science fiction stories for young adults. Since then she has written more than 50 children\'s books, including novels and short story collections, and also television scripts and a stage play. Her work has won more than 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. 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 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\' ethnicites were never 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 was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2008 Birthday Honours.

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.