Solace of the Road

Siobhan Dowd passed away in August 2007 after a long fight with breast cancer. In her short career, she has been nominated for a number of awards including the 2007 Carnegie Medal and the Booktrust Teenage Prize, and went on to win the 2007 Branford Boase Award and the 2007 Bisto Eilis Dilon Award - both awards that recognise an outstanding debut, for A Swift Pure Cry. Siobhan's second novel, The London Eye Mystery has also just won its first award - the 2007 Nasen TES Special Needs Award. In early 2007, Siobhan was nominated one of the top 25 Authors of the future as Waterstone's celebrated their 25 Anniversary.

Siobhan Dowd was born in London to Irish parents.  She spent much of her youth in the family home in County Waterford, then Wicklow town. She spent her writing life in Oxford.

After attending a catholic school in London, Siobhan gained a degree in Classics at Oxford University.  After a short stint in publishing she then joined the writer's organisation PEN, initially as a researcher and co-ordinator of the Writers in Prison Committee. 

Siobhan went on to be Programme Director of the Freedom To Write committee, based in New York, which included founding and leading the Rushdie Defense Committee USA and co-ordinating Salman Rushdie's visit with President Clinton in 1993. During her seven-year spell in New York, Siobhan was named one of the 'top 100 Irish-Americans' by Irish-America Magazine and AerLingus, for her global anti-censorship work.

On her return to the UK, Siobhan  co-founded for English PEN the Readers & Writers Programme which takes authors into schools that are often in more deprived areas, as well as prisons, young offender's institutions and community projects. 

During 2004, Siobhan was Deputy Commissioner for Children's Rights in Oxfordshire, working with local government to ensure that statutory services affecting children's lives conform with UN legislation.  Siobhan was also Deputy Editor of PEN International, a twice-yearly global magazine, and a freelance writer. She had an MA with Distinction in Gender and Ethnic Studies at Greenwich University, has authored short stories, columns and articles, and edited two anthologies.