Berlie Doherty
[6][7] Doherty soon followed suit, with her poetry and stories appearing on the children's pages of the Liverpool Echo and Hoylake News and Advertiser from age five.
[3] A lesson in creative writing as part of the certificate led to a short story about the convent school; broadcast on local radio, it was to form the nucleus of Doherty's first adult novel, Requiem.
[6] After employment as a social worker and teacher,[3] Doherty spent two years writing and producing schools programmes for BBC Radio Sheffield.
[9] Several of the series generated later publications: How Green You Are: The Making of Fingers Finnigan; Children of Winter; Tilly Minst Tales: Granny was a Buffer Girl and White Peak Farm...[5] Doherty wrote for the newspaper children's pages from age five until she lost eligibility when she turned fourteen.
[5] Her first book was How Green You Are!, a novel published in 1982 by Methuen in its Pied Piper series, with illustrations by Elaine McGregor Turney.
Some draw on her experience as a social worker to dramatise contemporary issues, including teenage pregnancy in Dear Nobody (1991), adoption in The Snake-Stone (1995), and African AIDS orphans and child trafficking in her latest novel, Abela: The Girl Who Saw Lions (2007).
Some of them are based on Doherty's own family history; Granny Was a Buffer Girl (1986) includes the story of her parents' marriage, while The Sailing Ship Tree (1998) draws on the lives of her father and grandfather.
[12][14] A ghost story, The Haunted Hills was inspired by a local legend, Lost Lad, which gave name to one of the rocky outcrops on Derwent Edge close to Berlie's home.
[18] Doherty has written many plays for radio, which she describes as "a wonderful medium to write for, inviting as it does both writer and listener to use their imaginations, to 'see' with their mind's eye.
She also wrote the 2001 series Zzaap and the Word Master about two children trapped in cyberspace, broadcast on BBC2 as part of the Look and Read schools programming.
[19] Daughter of the Sea was adapted from her novel of the same name, and was first performed at Sheffield Crucible Theatre, musicians including the Lindsay String Quartet in 2004, with music composed by Richard Chew.
[12][19] The Magician's Cat (2004) was commissioned by the Welsh National Opera and features music by Julian Philips, composer in residence at Glyndebourne.
[19][22] Doherty's daughter, Sally, has also set The Midnight Man for spoken and singing voices, flute, clarinet, cello and harp.
[22] Doherty won the annual Carnegie Medal from the Library Association, recognising the year's best children's book by a British subject, both for Granny Was a Buffer Girl (Methuen, 1986) and for Dear Nobody (Hamilton, 1991).
