Authors beginning with: K
Ally Kennen
Ally Kennen is a British author of adventure novels for children and teens. Some of her books have been marketed as thrillers and they may be classed as horror fiction. She was born in Somerset and grew up on a farm in the Exmoor region of South West England. She studied Archaeology and History at the University of Birmingham.
Anna Kemp
Anna Kemp writes picture books and middle-grade fiction. Her books have been nominated for a number of prizes including the Booktrust Early Years Award (2010), The Roald Dahl Funny Prize (2010, 2012), The Waterstones Children’s Book Prize (2011, 2013), Oscar’s Book Prize (2015), and The Dundee Picture Book Award (2019).
Her work has also been adapted for television (Bookaboo, CBeebies), puppetry (Little Angel), dance (Ballet Black), orchestra (LSO) and theatre (New Writing North, Little Blue Monster).
Annie Kubler
Annie Kubler was born in 1960, in the north east of France, in a mountainous area called the Vosges, where she spent her childhood.
After gaining a National Diploma in Visual Communication at the School of Decorative Arts in Strasbourg, with a specialisation in children's illustration, she moved to England in 1985. She joined the Child's Play team having been offered a job by publisher Michael Twinn, owner and founder of Child's Play.
For the past 20 years she has been art director of Child's Play, while illustrating many children's titles, including Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes (winner of the Sainsbury's Baby Book Award in 2002).
Clive King
Clive King was born in Richmond, Surrey, in 1924. When he was young his family moved to a village called Ash, near Sevenoaks in Kent, which is the setting for Stig of the Dump. He went to Downing College, Cambridge, and the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. He then served in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve. His service as a sailor and his work as a language teacher took him all over the world. Clive King lives with his family in Norfolk and is a full-time writer.
Dick King-Smith
Dick King-Smith served in the Grenadier Guards during the Second World War, and afterwards spent twenty years as a farmer in Gloucestershire, the county of his birth. Many of his stories are inspired by his farming experiences. He wrote a great number of children's books, including The Sheep-Pig (winner of the Guardian Award and filmed as Babe), Harry's Mad, The Hodgeheg, Martin's Mice, The Invisible Dog, The Queen's Nose and The Crowstarver. At the British Book Awards in 1991 he was voted Children's Author of the Year. In 2009 he was made OBE for services to children's literature. Dick King-Smith died in 2011 at the age of eighty-eight.
Dr Sheila Kanani
Dr Sheila Kanani is a space cadet, with her head high up in the clouds, even though her feet are firmly on planet Earth. Sheila became interested in space and astronomy at the age of 13 and her passion sky-rocketed from there. She has a PhD in planetary science and her favourite planet is Saturn. Her favourite "work" interests are teaching GCSE astronomy and giving public talks to audiences of all ages and sizes, while representing her place of work, the Royal Astronomical Society, which she adores.
Outside of astronomy, Sheila loves to play hockey and the saxophone, enjoys listening to records and dancing like no one is watching with her husband and young son, and curling up on the sofa with an excellent book and her six-fingered cat. Sheila's love of writing began when she was nine and she started a daily journal, which she has kept (mostly) up to date ever since!
Jeff Kinney
Jeff Kinney is now a household name - The Diary of A Wimpy Kid series was an instant international bestseller and has now been made into two blockbuster films. As well as being a bestselling author, Jeff is also an online developer and designer. He lives with his family in Massachusetts, USA.
Jennifer Killick
Jennifer Killick is the author of the Dread Wood series, Crater Lake and the Alex Sparrow series. She regularly visits schools and festivals, and her books have three times been selected for The Reading Agency's Summer Reading Challenge. She lives in Uxbridge, in a house full of children, animals and Lego. When she isn't busy mothering or step-mothering (which isn't often) she loves to read, write and run, as fast as she can.
Jim Kay
Jim Kay studied illustration in Edinburgh. After leaving university he worked for two years in the Archives of the Tate Gallery in London, and then worked as Assistant Curator of the Art Collections at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, for four years.
He now illustrates children's books and has started writing for children. He currently lives in Northamptonshire.
Jon Klassen
Jon Klassen grew up in Niagara Falls, Canada, and now lives in Los Angeles, California. He is the Caldecott Award-winning author and illustrator of I Want My Hat Back and This Is Not My Hat, as well as the illustrator of Sam and Dave Dig a Hole and Extra Yarn by Mac Barnett; The Dark by Lemony Snicket; House Held Up by Trees by Ted Kooser; Cats' Night Out by Caroline Stutson; and the first three books in the Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place series.
Judith Kerr
Judith Kerr was born on 14 June 1923 in Berlin but escaped from Hitler's Germany with her parents and brother in 1933 when she was nine years old. Her father was a drama critic and a distinguished writer whose books were burned by the Nazis. The family passed through Switzerland and France before arriving finally in England in 1936.
Judith went to eleven different schools, worked in the Red Cross during the war, and won a scholarship to the Central School of Arts and Crafts in 1945. Since then, she has worked as an artist, a BBC television scriptwriter and, for many decades now, as author and illustrator of children's books.
Judith has a daughter who is a designer and a son who is a novelist. She lives in London.
Judith won our Lifetime Achievement Award in 2016.
Laura Kirkpatrick
Laura Kirkpatrick is a Newcastle-based author, journalist and screenwriter, making waves in middle grade fiction with her fintastic series, And then I Turned Into a Mermaid. Her books capture the truly crazy experience that is growing up – and all the hilariousness that involves – with friendship and family always at the heart.
Liz Kessler
Liz Kessler is the author of two popular children’s series: Emily Windsnap and Philippa Fisher. A Year Without Autumn was her first standalone title and was shortlisted for the Blue Peter Awards 2012. Born in 1966, Liz grew up in the seaside town of Southport in the north west of England. She studied English at Loughborough University, after which she gained a teaching qualification at Keele University. More recently, she gained a distinction in a Masters degree in Creative Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University.
Before becoming an author, Liz taught English and Media Studies and ran Creative Writing courses. She also worked as a journalist at a few local and regional newspapers in Manchester and York. After school and university, Liz lived on a narrowboat on the canal for about ten years, after which she settled briefly in Manchester before travelling round Europe in a campervan for a year. She now lives in St Ives, Cornwall.
Nadine Kaadan
Nadine Kaadan is an award-wining children’s book author and illustrator from Damascus, Syria, who has published many books in Arabic. She lives in London, where she completed MAs in communication design (Kingston University) and art and politics (Goldsmiths University). Her Arabic-language book Answer me, Leila! won the 2011 Anna Lindh Award for the best fiction book for children with special needs and was featured in The Guardian in ‘Disability Inclusive Books That Should Be Available In English’. Tomorrow, about the daily life of a little boy during the Syrian conflict, was nominated for the 2019 Kate Greenaway Medal. One of her other titles, The Jasmine Sneeze, is one of the first children’s books in the UK that touches on Syria’s long and proud culture and heritage in a time marred by war. Her work has featured on CNN’s Connect the World programme and in a BBC short film, among others.
Peter Kalu
Peter Kalu is the author of three young adult novels: The Silent Striker, Being Me and Zombie XI. The Silent Striker is a semi-autobiographical novel which tells the story of how the world of a teen boy, Marcus, changes when he finds himself becoming deaf. Marcus appears as a side character in Being Me, which features as main protagonist the neuro-atypical Adele Vialli; and Marcus is also glimpsed in Zombie XI. The publishing rights to all three novels have been sold to Ghana and the USA.
Peter has also set onto page two folktales for younger children, Anansi and Tiger's Stew and The Singer and the Snorer, tales he has told at countless schools within the UK and beyond. He has written nine novels in all, including science fiction, crime and comedy, as well as for the stage and screen. Based in Manchester, he is Artistic Director at Cultureword.
Satoshi Kitamura
Satoshi Kitamura is both an author and illustrator. He was born in 1956 in Tokyo. He says that when he was young he read comics and admits that these have had a great influence on his style. He says he was also influenced by anything visual from a tin of sardines to the fine art of the East and the West. He was not trained as an artist, but at the age of 19 began to do commercial work. He moved to London in 1979 and worked mainly designing greeting cards. He started illustrating for Andersen Press in 1981. At this time he had an exhibition of his work at the Neal Street Gallery in Covent Garden, which Klaus Flugge visited and showed him the text of Angry Arthur.
Angry Arthur, written by Hiawyn Oram, was published in 1982 to great acclaim, winning the Mother Goose Award in 1983 and the Japanese Picture Book Award. In 1989, UFO diary was shortlisted for the Smarties Prize, an award he later went on to win for Me and My Cat, which was also shortlisted for the Kurt Mashler Award. In 2006, Satoshi’s collaboration with Colin McNaughton, Once Upon an Ordinary School Day, won The Japan Picture Book Award for best translated book. Satoshi’s book, Millie’s Marvellous Hat, was shortlisted for the Kate Greenaway Award in 2010.
Siri Kolu
Siri studied in Helsinki and now lives with her family in Vantaa, Finland. She is an author, dramatist and theatre instructor and is very active in Finnish literary circles. She's written 13 books for children, of which The Robbersons is her breakthrough with a film of the book out and a second in production. It is one of the most widely known and translated middle grade novels from Finland, and Siri continues to receive invitations to tour from around the world. The book won the Finlandia Junior Prize, was included in the IBBY Honour List and won the Zilveren Griffel, which is the most important award a translated book can receive in the Netherlands. Kolu's stories combine the essence of Astrid Lindgren and Roald Dahl with explosive humour.
Timothy Knapman
Timothy Knapman has been writing for children for over ten years. His books, which have been translated into 15 languages, include the best-selling Mungo and the Picture Book Pirates and Dinosaurs in the Supermarket. Timothy also writes plays and the words for musicals. He does lots of school visits and bookshop readings and his hobbies include swashbuckling. He is based near Walton-on-Thames, Surrey.