The Keeper of the Isis Light is a science fiction novel for young adults by Monica Hughes, published by Hamish Hamilton in 1980.

[2] They are set in the distant future on the planet Isis, which revolves around the F5 (yellow-white) star Ra in the constellation Indus (all fictitious).

The award is named for the mythical bird phoenix, which is reborn from its ashes, to suggest the book's rise from obscurity.

[4] Olwen is a young human woman living on the planet Isis as the keeper of the Light (a navigation beacon).

Accepting the Phoenix Award for Keeper twenty years later, Hughes discussed her writing process in general and specifically for that work.

That theme had been inspired by an Edmonton Journal description of the boy in the bubble: "David is a three-year-old who has never known a mother's kiss or the touch of a bare human hand.

[5] Hughes believed that she learned the answer in the course of writing and expressed it "in the last few words of the book when Olwen realizes that after her death Guardian will be alone.

"[5] Only after a school visit to talk about the book with third-grade children (ages about 8–9), when a girl explained "how bad she felt about the attitude of the colonists to Olwen’s physical appearance" —only then the author saw the theme, "prejudice and the damage it can cause, not only to the recipient, but also to the instigator.