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Elizabeth Wein
| Full Name: |
Elizabeth
E.
Wein |
| Born: |
October 2, 1964
New York City, New York, USA |
| Occupation: |
Writer |
| Nationality: |
American |
| Links: |
|
Biography
Elizabeth Wein has lived in Scotland for over ten years and wrote nearly all her novels there. Her first five books for young adults are set in Arthurian Britain and sixth century Ethiopia. The most recent of these form the sequence The Mark of Solomon, published in two parts as The Lion Hunter (2007) and The Empty Kingdom (2008). The Lion Hunter was short-listed for the Andre Norton Award for Best Young Adult Fantasy and Science Fiction in 2008. Elizabeth also writes short stories.
Elizabeth's latest novel for teens is a departure in a totally new direction. Code Name Verity, published by Egmont UK, Disney-Hyperion and Doubleday Canada in 2012, is a World War II thriller in which two young girls, one a Resistance spy and the other a transport pilot, become unlikely best friends. Code Name Verity has received widespread critical acclaim. Among its many laurels it is shortlisted for the CILIP Carnegie Medal; it is a Michael Printz Award Honor Book, a Boston Globe/Horn Book Awards Honor Book, and an SCBWI Golden Kite Honor Book. It is also a New York Times Bestseller in young adult fiction.
Born in New York City in 1964, Elizabeth moved to England when she was three and started school there. Her father Norman Wein, who worked for the New York City Board of Education for most of his life, was sent to England to do teacher training at what is now Manchester Metropolitan University, where he helped organize the Headstart program there. When Elizabeth was six, Norman was sent to the University of the West Indies in Jamaica for three years to do the same thing in Kingston. Elizabeth loved Jamaica and as a child was fluent in Jamaican patois; but in 1973 her parents separated, and Elizabeth and her younger brother and sister ended up back in the USA living with their mother Carol Flocken in Harrisburg, PA, where Carol's parents were. When Carol died in a car accident in 1978, Carol's parents took the children in and raised them.
Elizabeth went to Yale University, spent a work-study year back in England, and then spent seven years getting a PhD in Folklore at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, where she held a Javits Fellowship. While in Philadelphia she learned to ring church bells in the English style known as "change ringing", and in 1991 she met her future husband there at a bell ringers' dinner-dance. Tim is English, and in 1995 Elizabeth moved to England with him, and then to Scotland in 2000.
Elizabeth and Tim share another unusual interest - flying. Tim got his private pilot's license in 1993 and Elizabeth got hers ten years later. Together they have flown in the States from Kalamazoo to New Hampshire; in Kenya they've toured from Nairobi to Malindi, on the coast, and also all over southern England. Alone, most of Elizabeth's flying has been in eastern Scotland. Her interest in flying is what sparked the idea for Code Name Verity and for her new novel, Rose Under Fire.
Elizabeth and Tim have two children.
Works in the WWEnd Database
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