Sally Nicholls - Children's Author

I was born in Stockton-on-Tees, just after midnight, in a thunderstorm. My father died when I was two, and my brother Ian and I were brought up my mother. I always wanted to write - when people asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I used to say "I'm going to be a writer" - very definite.

I've always loved reading, and I spent most of my childhood trying to make real life as much like a book as possible. My friends and I had a secret club like the Secret Seven, and when I was nine I got most of my hair cut off because I wanted to look like George in the Famous Five. I was a real tomboy - I liked riding my bike, climbing trees and building dens in our garden. And I liked making up stories. I used to wander round my school playground at break, making up stories in my head.


I went to two secondary schools - a little Quaker school in North Yorkshire (where it was so cold that thick woolly jumpers were part of the school uniform) and a big comprehensive. I was very lonely at the little school, but I made friends at the comprehensive and got on all right. I didn't like being a teenager very much, though.

After school, I got to be an adult, which was fantastic. I went and worked in a Red Cross Hospital in Japan and then travelled around Australia and New Zealand. I jumped off bridges and tall buildings, climbed Mount Doom, wore a kimono and went to see a ballet in the Sydney Opera House. Then I came back and did a degree in Philosophy and Literature at Warwick. In my third year, realising with some panic that I was now supposed to earn a living, I enrolled in a masters in Writing for Young People at Bath Spa. It was here that I wrote Ways to Live Forever. I also won the prize for the writer with most potential, through which I got my agent. Four months later, I had a publisher.

I now live in a little house in Oxford, writing stories, and trying to believe my luck.
 

Photo by Eric Luke

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Featured Books, with extracts by Sally Nicholls

All Fall Down
Sally Nicholls
A brilliant evocation of the utter devastation caused by The Black Death in 1349 which combines a  remarkable optimism about human nature and morality in the midst of an epidemic on an exceptional scale. Isabel’s world collapses around her as...
Featured in: 11+ readers | 14+ readers | eBooks
Format: Paperback - Released: 04/04/2013
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A Lily, A Rose
Sally Nicholls
Interest Age Teen Reading Age 8     Award-winning Sally Nicholls brings medieval romance to life in this easy-to-read and vivid story about young love which shows that despite the years between then and now the feelings of young lovers remain...
Featured in: 14+ readers | Dyslexia-friendly
Format: Paperback - Released: 15/03/2013
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All Fall Down
Sally Nicholls
March 2012 Book of the Month.  This is an eagerly anticipated, powerful and inspiring historical novel about survival in the face of real-life horror from one of today's most exciting young writers.  Sally Nicholls provides a heartbreaking account of one...
Featured in: 11+ readers | 14+ readers | Books of the Month | eBooks
Format: Paperback - Released: 01/03/2012
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Season of Secrets
Sally Nicholls
A haunting and unforgettable novel from the award-winning author of Ways to Live Forever. Season of Secrets weaves the tale of a heartbroken child and an age-old legend into beautiful story of love, healing and strange magic. Resonant...
Featured in: 11+ readers | eBooks
Format: Paperback - Released: 01/03/2012
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Ways To Live Forever
Sally Nicholls
Shortlisted for the 2009 Branford Boase Best Debut Novel Award. Winner of Glen Dimplex Prize for New Writers 2008. Winner of Waterstone’s Children’s Book Prize 2008. Winner of Luchs Prize (Germany) for best children’s book published in Germany in the last year. Sympathetic, touching,...
Featured in: 11+ readers | Book Awards | eBooks
Format: Paperback - Released: 01/03/2012
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Season of Secrets
Sally Nicholls
A haunting and unforgettable new novel From the award-winning author of Ways to Live Forever. Season of Secrets weaves the tale of a heartbroken child and an age-old legend into beautiful story of love, healing and strange magic. Resonant of classics...
Featured in: 11+ readers | Books of the Month | eBooks
Format: Paperback - Released: 04/01/2010
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Season of Secrets
Sally Nicholls
A haunting and unforgettable new novel From the award-winning author of Ways to Live Forever. Season of Secrets weaves the tale of a heartbroken child and an age-old legend into beautiful story of love, healing and strange magic....
Featured in: 11+ readers | 14+ readers | Books of the Month | eBooks
Format: Paperback - Released: 06/04/2009
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Ways To Live Forever
Sally Nicholls
Shortlisted for the 2009 Branford Boase Best Debut Novel Award   Sympathetic, touching, and surprisingly funny, Ways To Live Forever is a fantastic debut from Sally Nicholls. Sam loves facts. He wants to know about UFOs and horror movies...
Featured in: 11+ readers | Book Awards | eBooks
Format: Paperback - Released: 01/09/2008
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Ways To Live Forever
Sally Nicholls
Sympathetic, touching, and surprisingly funny, Ways To Live Forever is a fantastic debut from Sally Nicholls. Sam loves facts. He wants to know about UFOs horror movies and airships and ghosts and scientists, and...
Featured in: 11+ readers | Debuts of the Month | eBooks
Format: Paperback - Released: 07/01/2008
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