Nina Bawden is one of the most important and engaging contemporary writers of fiction for young people. Several of her novels for children - Carrie's War, a Phoenix Award winner in 1993; The Peppermint Pig, which won the Guardian Fiction Award; The Runaway Summer and Keeping Henry - have become contemporary classics.

She has written over forty novels (23 for adults and 19 for children), and an autobiography, In My Own Time (Virago 1994). Her adult work includes the Booker shortlisted Circles of Deceit (Macmillan 1987) and Family Money (St Martin's 1991). Her books have been translated into numerous languages and several have been adapted for film or television.

In May 2002, Nina was seriously injured in the Potters Bar rail crash, a train derailment which killed her husband Austen Kark. She was movingly portrayed as a character in the David Hare play, The Permanent Way, about the privatization of the British railways. Nina herself wrote Dear Austen, a powerful essay addressed to her late husband, a former managing director of the BBC World Service.

Born in London in 1925, Nina studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford University in the same year as Margaret Thatcher. She received the prestigious S.T. Dupont Golden Pen Award for a lifetime's contribution to literature in 2004.