Frances Hardinge

Frances Hardinge (born 1973) is a British children's writer. Her debut novel, Fly By Night, won the 2006 Branford Boase Award and was listed as one of the School Library Journal Best Books, while her 2015 novel The Lie Tree won the 2015 Costa Book Award, the first children's book to do so since Philip Pullman's The Amber Spyglass in 2001. She has also been shortlisted and achieved a number of other awards for both her novels as well as some of her short stories. Hardinge is often seen wearing a black hat and enjoys dressing in old-fashioned clothing.

Hardinge was born in Brighton, England, and dreamed of writing at the age of four. She studied English at Somerville College, University of Oxford and was the founder member of a writers' workshop there.

Her writing career started after she won a short story magazine competition. Shortly after winning she wrote Fly By Night in her spare time and showed it to Macmillan Publishers after pressure from a friend. Twilight Robbery is a sequel to Fly by Night, featuring again the young heroine Mosca Mye, her pet goose Saracen, and Eponymous Clent, a conman.

• 2006: Branford Boase Award, winner, Fly by Night
• 2011: Guardian Award, short-list, Twilight Robbery
• 2012: Kitschies, short-list, A Face Like Glass
• 2015: Carnegie Medal, short-list, Cuckoo Song
• 2015: Costa Book Awards, children's, The Lie Tree
• 2015: Costa Book Awards, Book of the Year, The Lie Tree
• 2016: Carnegie Medal, short-list, The Lie Tree

• "Previous Winners". The Branford Boase Award. 2006 Winner. Retrieved 2015-11-09. 
• "2015 Costa Category Award Winners" (PDF). Costa Coffee. Retrieved 2016-01-05. 
• Drabble, Emily (2016-01-04). "Frances Hardinge scoops the Costa children's book award 2015 with The Lie Tree". The Guardian. Retrieved 2016-01-05. 
• "2015 Book of the Year" (PDF). The Costa Book Awards. Retrieved 2016-01-26. 

Novels

Hardinge's first six novels were all published in the UK by Macmillan Children's Books.

• Fly By Night (2005)
• Verdigris Deep (2007); also published in the US as Well Witched
• Gullstruck Island (2009); US title, The Lost Conspiracy
• Twilight Robbery (2011); US title, Fly Trap – sequel to Fly by Night
• A Face Like Glass (2012)
• Cuckoo Song (2014)
• The Lie Tree (2015)

While Fly By Night was being finalised for publication, Hardinge signed a deal with Macmillan Publishers to produce three further novels.

Short fiction

Hardinge has written several short stories published in magazines and anthologies.

• "Shining Man", The Dream Zone 8 (Jan 2001)
• "Communion", Wordplay 1 (Spring 2002)
• "Captive Audience", Piffle 7 (Oct 2002)
• "Bengal Rose", Scribble 20 (Spring 2003)
• "Black Grass", All Hallows 43 (Summer 2007)
• "Halfway House", Alchemy 3 (Jan 2006)
• "Behind The Mirror", serialised in First News (2007)
• "Payment Due", in Under My Hat: Tales from the Cauldron, ed. Jonathan Strahan (Random House, 2012)
• "Flawless", in Twisted Winter, ed. Catherine Butler (Black, 2013)
• "Hayfever", Subterranean, Winter 2014 (Dec 2013)
• TBC, in Mystery & Mayhem, (Egmont Publishing, 2016)

• ^
• "The Library: Short Stories". Frances Hardinge's Dark Tower. Archived from the original on 18 May 2008. Retrieved 2008-05-18.