Joy Cowley

Cassia Joy Cowley DCNZM OBE (née Summers, born 7 August 1936), best known as Joy Cowley, is a New Zealand author of children's fiction, novels, and short stories.
Her first novel, Nest in a Fallen Tree (1967), was adapted into the 1971 film The Night Digger by screenwriter Roald Dahl. Following its success in the United States, Cowley wrote several works for adults: her novels Man of Straw (1972), Of Men and Angels (1972), The Mandrake Root (1975), and The Growing Season (1979) typically focused on families dealing with issues such as marital infidelity, mental illness, and death. Cowley has also published several collections of short stories, including Two of a Kind (1984) and Heart Attack and Other Stories (1985). Cowley is known primarily for her children's fiction. Her children's novel The Silent One (1981), was made into a 1985 film; other works include Bow Down Shadrach (1991) and its sequel Gladly, Here I Come (1994).
She has written 41 picture books, which include The Duck in the Gun (1969), The Terrible Taniwha of Timberditch (1982), Salmagundi (1985), and The Cheese Trap (1995). The Duck in the Gun and Salmagundi are explicitly anti-war books. She has been actively involved in teaching early reading skills and helping those with reading difficulties, in which capacity she has written approximately 500 basal readers (termed reading books in New Zealand).

Cowley was awarded a 1990 Commemoration Medal for services to New Zealand, and in 1992 she was awarded an OBE for services to children's literature. The following year she was granted an honorary doctorate (D.Litt) from Massey University, and was awarded the New Zealand Suffrage Centennial Medal. In the 2005 Queen's Birthday Honours List, Cowley was appointed a Distinguished Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit (DCNZM) for services to children's literature.

In 1993, Cowley became the third recipient of the Margaret Mahy Award, whose winners present and publish a lecture concerning children's literature or literacy. Cowley's lecture was titled Influences. The award is presented by the Storylines Childrens Literature Charitable Trust, who established the Joy Cowley Award in 2002, in recognition of the "exceptional contribution Joy Cowley makes to both children's literature and literacy in New Zealand and internationally". In 2004, she became a patron of the Storylines Childrens Literature Foundation, and she is one of Storylines' trustees. At least one of her books has been on the Storylines Notable Books List every year since it was established in 2000, other than 2009 and 2011 (in 2012 she was given a "special mention").

In 2002, she was awarded the Roberta Long Medal, presented by the University of Alabama at Birmingham for culturally diverse children's literature. In 2004, she was awarded the A. W. Reed Award for Contribution to New Zealand Literature, and in 2010, she won the Prime Minister's Award for Literary Achievement in the Fiction category.

Cowley has won the overall Book of the Year award three times at the various incarnations of the New Zealand Post Children's Book Awards: first for The Silent One in 1982; then for Hunter in 2006; and finally for Snake and Lizard in 2008. The latter two books were entered into the Junior Fiction category, in which she also won the category award for her books Ticket to the Sky Dance in 1998, Starbright and the Dream Eater in 1999, and Shadrach Girl in 2001. Cowley also won the Children's Choice award in this category for Friends: Snake and Lizard in 2010. She won the now defunct Fiction category in 1992 for Bow Down Shadrach, and the Picture Book category in 2002 for Brodie. An additional five of her books have been short-listed as finalists in the Picture Book category at the awards, and an additional three in the Junior Fiction category.

Cowley's book The Video Shop Sparrow was included in the 2000 White Ravens List, administered by the International Youth Library, and five of her books have been finalists for the Esther Glen Award from 1995 to 2010. She won Best Script Television Drama at the 1994 TV Guide Television Awards for Mother Tongue, a 52-minute film shot in 1992, and set in 1953, about an 18-year-old couple who fall in love – though the woman (played by Sarah Smuts-Kennedy) is Catholic, and the man (played by Craig Parker) is Jewish.

Cowley has been married three times. First at 20 years old to dairy farmer Ted Cowley, with whom she had four children: Sharon, Edward, Judith and James. After their marriage ended in 1967, Cowley married Malcolm Mason, a Wellington writer and accountant who died in 1985. In 1989, Cowley married her current husband, Terry Coles. She lived with him, and an assortment of animals, for many years in the Marlborough Sounds, but in 2004 they moved to a wharf apartment in Wellington so Coles could be nearer medical services. As Coles' health deteriorated, Wellington's stairs and traffic became too much for him, and the couple moved again to Featherston, where Cowley now lives. She has 13 grandchildren and is still writing full-time.

• 1986 - Turnips For Dinner, illustrated by Jan van der Voo, 16pp., ISBN 0-87449-368-4
• 1986 - The King's Pudding, illustrated by Martin Bailey, 16pp., ISBN 0-87449-370-6
• 2007 – Snake and Lizard, illustrated by Gavin Bishop, 102pp., ISBN 978-0-9582787-3-7
• 2009 – Friends: Snake and Lizard, illustrated by Gavin Bishop, 144pp., ISBN 978-1-877467-25-7
• 2010 – The Fierce Little Woman and the Wicked Pirate, 40pp., ISBN 9781877467400
• 2011 – Stories of the Wild West Gang, 362pp., ISBN 978-1-877467-85-1
• 2013 – Dunger, 156pp., ISBN 978-1-877579-46-2
• 2014 – Speed of Light, 208pp., ISBN 978-1-877579-93-6
• 2015 – The Bakehouse, 140pp., ISBN 978-1-776570-07-2
• 2016 – The Road to Ratenburg, 200pp., ISBN 978-1-776570-75-1

• Cowley, Joy. Snake and Lizard. Gecko Press. ISBN 9781877579592. Retrieved 7 July 2016. 
• Cowley, Joy. Friends: Snake and Lizard. Gecko Press. ISBN 9781877467998. Retrieved 7 July 2016. 
• Cowley, Joy; Davis, Sarah. The Fierce Little Woman and the Wicked Pirate. Gecko Press. ISBN 9781877467400. Retrieved 7 July 2016. 
• Cowley, Joy. Stories of the Wild West Gang. Gecko Press. ISBN 9781776570058. Retrieved 7 July 2016. 
• Cowley, Joy. Dunger. Gecko Press. ISBN 9781927271193. Retrieved 7 July 2016. 
• Cowley, Joy. The Speed of Light. Gecko Press. ISBN 9781927271230. Retrieved 7 July 2016. 
• Cowley, Joy. The Bakehouse. Gecko Press. ISBN 9781776570072. Retrieved 7 July 2016. 
• Cowley, Joy. The Road to Ratenburg. Gecko Press. ISBN 9781776571024. Retrieved 7 July 2016.