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Profile
Joy Cowley has been a pioneering and sustaining influence on writing
for children in New Zealand. She was a founding writer for Learning Media’s
Ready to Read programme and other educational reading series. Over the past
25 years, most New Zealand children have learned to read through her books.
Selected published works
The Silent One, 1981, Inaugural Children’s Book
of the Year, 2001; Salmagundi, 1985; The Screaming Mean Machine,
1993; Mrs Wishy-Washy series; Greedy Cat series;
Shadrach Trilogy, 2000 Apple Banana Cherry, 2000; Brodie, 2001,
winner, Picture Book category, New Zealand Post Children’s Book Awards
2002; Weta, 2002; Duck Walk, 2002; Hunter, Book of
the Year, New Zealand Post Children’s Book Awards 2006; Snake and Lizard, 2007, Winner Book of the Year and Junior Fiction categories New Zealand Post Childrens Book Awards 2008, and Chicken Feathers in 2008.
Joy Cowley's adult fiction can be found here.
Biography
Born in Levin in 1936, Joy Cowley has had diverse careers – artist,
photographer, builder’s labourer, farm worker, pharmaceutical apprentice,
newspaper children’s page editor and, of course, writer. She began writing
seriously in 1960, sending two or three short stories to the New Zealand
Listener each month. When a short story from Landfall was republished
in the United States, Doubleday publishers wrote asking for a novel. In response,
she wrote Nest in a Falling Tree in six months. It was published by
Doubleday in 1967 to enthusiastic reviews and was made into a film, with the
screenplay by Roald Dahl and his wife, Patricia Neal, cast in the leading role.
Her first picture book, The Duck and the Gun, was illustrated by Edward
Sorel, New York 1969, was re-illustrated by Robyn Belton and published in 1985
and subsequently won the Russell Clark Medal in New Zealand.
Cowley’s 45-year writing career has taken her around the globe. She loves
to meet children and hear what they think about her stories and life in general.
“The day I’m no longer with children is the day I stop writing for
them, because the energy flow comes from them and goes back to them,”
she says.
Love, humour and a little twist at the end are key components of Cowley’s
writing. She has written more than 600 titles for all ages and her books are
available in most countries where English is a first or second language. Many
books have also been translated. One of her short stories, The Silk,
is a perennial choice in New Zealand anthologies. Her award-winning novel, The
Silent One, was made into a very successful feature film in 1985.
Many of Cowley’s awards have been for the corpus of her work as much
as for individual works. She received a New Zealand Commemoration Medal in 1990,
the Order of the British Empire in 1992 for her services to children’s
literature, the Margaret Mahy Lecture Award in 1993 and an Honorary Doctorate
from Massey University in 1993. She was awarded the Roberta Long Medal (Alberta)
in 2002, and in the same year, the New Zealand Children’s Literature Foundation
inaugurated the Joy Cowley Award in her honour. She was given the A. W. Reed
Contribution to New Zealand Literature Award at the Montana New Zealand Book
Awards 2004, an award presented biennially in recognition of an outstanding
contribution to New Zealand literature and an involvement in activities which
foster and promote literature to wider audiences.
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