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Authors beginning with: P

Alex Paterson

Alex was a soldier and a jungle leader before concentrating on his illustration career: following in the footsteps of his sister and cousin who are also both children's illustrators. He has had eleven books published so far.

Alex lives in a little village in Warwickshire with his wife Sarah.

Annabel Pitcher

Annabel Pitcher studied English at Oxford and has since worked as a scriptwriter and an English teacher. She lives in Yorkshire with her husband and is a full time writer.

Anne Plichota and Cendrine Wolf

Anne Plichota was born in Dijon, France, and after studying Chinese language and culture spent several years living and working in Korea and China. She has had a varied career: as a Chinese teacher, a nurse’s aide, a public letter writer, and most recently a librarian. She enjoys American and Gothic literature and hearing people’s stories. She lives in Strasbourg with her teenage daughter.

Cendrine Wolf was born in the Alsace region of France. She studied sports, and went on to work in the socio-cultural sector, particularly in deprived neighbourhoods. She taught herself illustration, discovering it late in life, and loves fantasy literature and speed ‘in all its forms’. She lives in Strasbourg.

Together, Anne and Cendrine are the authors of the Oksa Pollock series.

Beatrix Potter

Beatrix Potter is one of the world's best-loved children's authors of all time. From her first book, The Tale of Peter Rabbit (1902) she went on to create a series of stories based around animal characters including Mrs Tiggy-winkle, Mr Jeremy Fisher and Tom Kitten. Her humorous, lively tales and beautiful illustrations have become a natural part of childhood.

A source of inspiration was the Lake District where she lived for the last thirty years of her life as a farmer and conservationist.

Brian Patten

Brian Patten is an English poet and author. He came to prominence in the 1960s as one of the Liverpool poets, and writes primarily lyrical poetry about human relationships.

Chris Priestley

Chris Priestley is the author of the Tales of Terror series and the hugely popular, award-winning Mister Creecher. He is inspired by the tradition of horror stories by authors such as Edgar Allan Poe and Mary Shelley. Chris is also a talented artist and illustrator, and his cartoons have been published in The Economist, Independent and other national newspapers. Chris lives in Cambridge, where he continues to think up marvellously macabre stories.

Garry Parsons

Garry Parsons studied Fine Art at Canterbury and the Illustration Sequential Design M.A  at University of Brighton. He is a talented new illustrator, whose work has captured the imaginations of children all over the UK. Billy's Bucket (written by Kes Gray) won the Red House Children's Book Award.

Jan Pieńkowski

Winner of the Kate Greenaway Medal for illustration (twice), Jan Pieńkowski is best known for Haunted House, his pop-ups and the Meg and Mog series, created with Helen Nicoll. His other work includes wonderfully evocative silhouette books such as Christmas and Easter, in the incomparable King James version. For the very young, he has written and illustrated the Nursery Books in bold and brilliant colours.

Jenny Pearson

Jenny Pearson has been awarded six mugs, one fridge magnet, one wall plaque and numerous cards for her role as Best Teacher in the World. When she is not busy being inspirational in the classroom, she would like nothing more than to relax with her two young boys, but she can't as they view her as a human climbing frame. Her debut novel, The Super Miraculous Journey of Freddie Yates, was shortlisted for the Costa Children's Book Award and selected as a Waterstones Book of the Month.

Jewell Parker Rhodes

Jewell Parker Rhodes grew up in Pennsylvania. She is an author of adult and children's books, a Coretta Scott King Honour award-winner, and a professor of creative writing at Arizona State University. She currently lives in San Jose.

Korky Paul

Korky Paul was born in Harare Zimbabwe in 1951. He enjoyed a wild and privileged childhood in the African Bushveldt. He studied Fine Arts at Durban Art School and Film Animation at CalArts. He began his career in advertising before becoming an award-winning illustrator of children's books. He has sold more than two million books world wide in over twenty languages.

Known only to himself as the 'World's Greatest Portrait Artist', Korky regularly visits schools promoting his passion for drawing. He is a patron of The Art Room, Pegasus Theatre and Reading Quest. Korky Paul is married with two children. He lives in Oxford but they spend the summer living it up in Greece.

Levi Pinfold

Levi Pinfold was born in the Forest of Dean. His love of stories, painting and the work of illustrators such as Maurice Sendak, Alan Lee and Dave McKean led him to study Illustration at the University College Falmouth, where he developed narrative illustrations in his own style; a stylised realism.

Alongside painting, Levi writes stories in his spare time. Since graduating from university in 2006, Levi has worked as a self employed illustrator. The Django (Templar Publishing) his debut picture book, is inspired by Levi's love of music. Levi lives and works in Cornwall, and plays banjo and guitar when no one else is looking. Levi won The Book Trust Early Years Award in the Best Emerging Illustrator Category for 2010.

Levi was chosen for a Book Trust Best New Illustrators Award in 2011.

Lincoln Peirce

Lincoln Peirce began creating comics in the 6th grade (just like Big Nate!). He went on to teach art at a New York City High School. Lincoln created the cartoon-strip character Big Nate in 1991, naming the character after a nickname he gave his older brother as a kid. 

He lives in Portland, Maine in the US and as well as creating Big Nate comic strips and books, he hosts a local radio show.

Liz Pichon

Liz Pichon studied graphic design and has worked as an art director in the music industry. Her freelance design work has appeared on a range of products and she has written and illustrated a number of picture books. Liz's first book for 9+ readers, The Brilliant World of Tom Gates won the Roald Dahl Funny Prize, The Best Book for Young Readers – Red House Book Award and the Best Fiction for 5-12 year olds category of the Waterstones Children's Book Prize. Liz is married with three children and lives in Brighton.

Mal Peet

Mal Peet grew up in a council estate in north Norfolk in a family that he describes as 'emotionally impaired'. He attended the Paston School and studied English and American Studies at the University of Warwick, after which he worked at a variety of jobs before becoming a novelist at a relatively late age. He lives in Devon with his wife, Elspeth Graham, and has three children.

His first novel, Keeper (2003), won the Branford Boase Award. His second, Tamar (2005), won the 2005 Carnegie Medal. In 2007 he published The Penalty, which was shortlisted for the 2007 Book Trust Teenage Prize. He won the 2009 Guardian Children's Fiction Prize with Exposure (2008), a modern re-telling of Shakespeare's Othello. Cloud Tea Monkeys (2010), a children's picture book written in conjunction with his wife and illustrated by Juan Wijngaard, is a modern folktale set in India. He has also written Life: An Exploded Diagram (2011).

Marc-Etienne Peintre

Marc-Etienne Peintre studied illustration at the Emile Cohl school in Lyon before moving to Paris, where he works as an illustrator of magazines and picture books, employing a playful and offbeat style that makes strong use of colour and texture.

Michelle Paver

Born in Malawi in 1960 to a Belgian mother and a father who ran the tiny 'Nyasaland Times', Michelle Paver moved to the UK when she was three. She was brought up in Wimbledon and, following a Biochemistry Degree from Oxford, she became a partner in a big City law firm.

She gave up the City to follow her long-held dream of becoming a writer. She is the author of the brilliantly successful children's series, The Chronicles of Ancient Darkness.

Nick Price

Nick Price has illustrated numerous books for children, including Pongwiffy, Clover Twig and Tumtum And Nutmeg, and also worked on animated television series including Doctor Snuggles.

Nicola Penfold

Nicola Penfold was born in Merseyside and grew up in Doncaster. She studied English at Cambridge, before completing a Computing Science masters at Imperial College London. Where the World Turns Wild was shortlisted for the first Joan Aiken Future Classics Prize in 2017. It was also selected for SCBWI's 2018 Undiscovered Voices anthology. Nicola lives with her husband, four children and two cats in North London, and escapes when she can to wilder corners of the UK for adventures.

Nii Ayikwei Parkes

Author and performance poet Nii Ayikwei Parkes was BookTrust's second online writer in residence from September 2009 to February 2010. Nii was children’s poet in residence at the Brighton Festival in 2007, has led storytelling sessions at the Southbank Centre and British Museum and his poem ‘Wrong Side’ has been memorised by hundreds of pupils across the UK. His poem, 'Tin Roof', was selected for the 'Poems on the Underground' initiative in 2007.  As a socio-cultural commentator and advocate for African writing, Nii has led forums internationally, and he runs the African Writers’ Evening series at the Poetry Café in Covent Garden. His debut novel, Tail of the Blue Bird, was published by Jonathan Cape in 2009.

Nii also writes for children under the pen name K P Kojo. His first book for children, The Parade, a book of Ananse stories, was selected for the 2012 USBBY’s Outstanding International Books list in the United States and translated into Korean. His most recent book, Tales from Africa (2017) retells fables from traditions ranging from the Berber to Zulu. Prior to publishing Nii ran over 300 readings and workshops in schools around the world. In 2015, he was selected as one of Africa’s 39 most promising authors of the new generation for the World Book Capital Africa 39 Project. Nii is based between Ghana and London.

Philip Pullman

Philip Pullman is an English writer from Norwich. He is the best-selling author of several books, most notably his trilogy of fantasy novels, His Dark Materials, and his fictionalised biography of Jesus, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ. The first book of His Dark Materials has been turned into the film The Golden Compass and the first two books are now a BBC TV series. The first two books from his Sally Lockhart series as well as his children's novel I was a Rat! or The Scarlet Slippers have also been adapted for television.

Pooja Puri

Pooja has loved writing stories since she was a child. She first tasted publishing success with her short story, ‘Chess’, and later graduated from King’s College London with a degree in English anguage and literature. Whilst at university she read for a publishing house and has since  worked in the education sector. In 2014, she was chosen as a winner of the Ideas Tap Writers’ Centre Norwich Inspires competition. In 2017, she successfully completed an MA in writing for young people at Bath Spa University. Her debut novel, The Jungle, was released in 2017 and nominated for the CILIP Carnegie Medal 2018. 

She is currently working on her second book, a historical novel set in the Elizabethan era. Pooja is interested in exploring the idea of boundaries and experimenting with different voices. Based in London, she is represented by Lauren Gardner at the Bell Lomax Moreton Agency. 

R J Palacio

R J Palacio lives in New York City with her family and a black dog called Bear. Her critically acclaimed debut novel, Wonder, has sold 5 million copies worldwide.

Rikin Parekh

Rikin has a foundation degree from Camberwell College of Arts and a degree in illustration from the University of Westminster. After graduating, he worked as a production illustrator/creature designer, freelancing in the film industry, mainly working with monsters. He is a proud member of SCBWI-UK and has 300+ Spider-Man comics to his name. When Rikin isn’t drawing you’ll find him listening to the Beatles and Jimi Hendrix, munching away at pizza whilst watching a movie, trying to talk to the birds and stray cats in his garden — or working at a primary school as a Year 6 learning support assistant.

His illustrations are predominately geared towards children from ages three up. The themes of his work revolve around friendships and dreams; he feels it’s very important for children to understand that dreams are something that can become a reality, no matter how big or small. Rikin lives in Wembley, London.

Rodman Philbrick

Rodman Philbrick was born in Boston, Massachusetts and grew up in a small town on the coast of New Hampshire in the United States of America. He has been writing since the age of sixteen and had published more than a dozen novels for adults before the publication of his first book for younger readers, Freak the Mighty in 1993. Since then, he has won numerous awards and honours, and had Freak the Mighty adapted into a Golden Globe-nominated film starring Sharon Stone, Gillian Anderson and James Gandolfini in 1998. He worked as both a longshoreman and a boat builder in his younger years and is still an avid fisherman, practicing what he describes as the fine art of angling as frequently as possible.

S.A. Patrick

S.A. Patrick was born in Belfast. When he was a child, he wanted to write video games, become an author, and have magical powers. The first two came true. If he ever does get magical powers, he hopes people like dragons and griffins because there’ll suddenly be a lot of them around. A Darkness of Dragons is his first book for children. 

Simon Puttock

After a childhood that involved lots of travel – New Zealand, Trinidad, Asutralia, Barbados … amongst other places- Simon studied English Literature at Newcastle University and now lives in Edinburgh. As well as The Baby That Roared he’s also written Miss Fox and the Goat and Donkey books.

Siobhan Parkinson

Siobhán Parkinson  is an Irish writer. She writes for both children and adults and was made Laureate na nÓg in 2010. She has published more than twenty books since 1992, winning numerous awards, and her books have been translated into multiple languages. She has written in both Irish and English, and also translated from German into English.

Smriti Halls

Smriti Halls is an award-winning, critically acclaimed children's author, published in more than 30 languages worldwide. Her books include #1 bestseller I Love You Night and Day, I'm Sticking with You, Elephant in My Kitchen and The Little Island.

With a cast of characters as varied as mischievous monsters and disgruntled geese, she explores relationship and identity; the personal and the political; how it feels to be in your own skin - and in someone else's. Her books, often fast-paced and funny or lyrical and tender, are always full of heart and hope and speak to the child in all of us.

Smriti also creates bold board books to engage the very smallest readers, young fiction for newly independent readers and beautiful, highly illustrated non-fiction for older readers including the award-winning The Ways of the Wolf.

The Little Island is currently shortlisted for the 2020 Little Rebels Award and the 2020 Teach Primary Awards, while I'm Sticking With You was the Independent Bookshops Children's Book of the Month for August 2020. Her forthcoming picture book Rain Before Rainbows (illustrated by David Litchfield) has been made available ahead of publication in partnership with Save the Children as a free e-book to support their work with families most affected by the coronavirus pandemic.

Smriti works widely with children and adults in schools, libraries, festivals, bookshops and prisons to bring a love of reading and stories to the widest possible audience. She lives in London and is also published as Smriti Prasadam-Halls.

Stephan Pastis

Stephan Pastis is the author-illustrator of Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made, a New York Times bestseller. He is also the creator of the devoutly followed comic strip Pearls Before Swine, which appears in more than 600 newspapers worldwide. His compilation Larry in Wonderland debuted at No. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list for paperback graphic novels. Stephan Pastis lives in northern California, USA.

Steve Parker

Steve Parker is an author, editor and consultant specialising in illustrated information books on the natural world. Steve is a Senior Scientific Fellow of the Zoological Society of London and has worked on the staff of London's Natural History Museum. He is based in Suffolk, UK, and has written over 250 books, including dinosaur titles such Extreme Dinosaurs.

Terry Pratchett

Terry Pratchett was the acclaimed creator of the global bestselling Discworld series, the first of which, The Colour of Magic, was published in 1983. In all, he was the author of over fifty bestselling books. His novels have been widely adapted for stage and screen, and he was the winner of multiple prizes, including the Carnegie Medal, as well as being awarded a knighthood for services to literature. He died in March 2015.

Tim Peake

Tim Peake was the first British ESA astronaut to visit the International Space Station. He is also a best-selling author and an inspirational communicator of science to audiences of all ages. Tim served as an army officer and a combat search and rescue instructor and flew helicopter operations. Tim was selected as an ESA astronaut in May 2009 and after arduous training Tim was assigned to a mission to the International Space Station in May 2013. He launched to space on 15 December 2015. Tim took part in over 250 scientific experiments during his mission. His Principia mission also focused on educational outreach, engaging more than 2 million schoolchildren across Europe in over 30 projects during his time in space.

Tom Palmer

Tom Palmer writes children’s books about history and sport. In 2019 he won the Children’s Book Award for Armistice Runner, which was also nominated for the Carnegie Prize. His best known series are Football Academy, Foul Play and Roy of the Rovers. You can find free resources and first chapters by visiting his website.

Tom Percival

Tom Percival studied Graphic Design in South Wales. His illustration career has seen him design Halloween merchandise for a major supermarket, create the character 'Hector' for an Aardman-animated road safety campaign and produce cover art for a number of successful children's fiction series, including Skulduggery Pleasant. He lives in Bristol with his girlfriend, their baby son and next door's cat.