Ann Downer

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Ann Downer (1960–2015) was an American writer, principally of fantasy novels for children and young adults, as well as short fiction and poetry.

Biography[]

Ann Downer was born in Arlington, Virginia in 1960 and grew up in Manila and Bangkok and recalled avidly reading fantasy fiction.[1]

Her first published work was a trilogy published in the late 1980s and early 1990s (The Spellkey, The Glass Salamander, and The Books of the Keepers), collected in a revised edition in 1995 as The Spellkey Trilogy. A second series for middle-grade readers, begun in 2003 with the novel Hatching Magic, continues with The Dragon of Never-Was (2006). The Spellkey series is high fantasy, taking place wholly in an invented world and chronicling a good-versus-evil story of two foundlings, a stableboy and an ostracized seer. Hatching Magic and its sequel, The Dragon of Never-Was, are contemporary fantasies with elements of time travel. The series follows a young girl, Theodora Oglethorpe, as she discovers a world of wizardry and magic. While Downer's books are frequently compared to the work of Patricia A. McKillip and Diana Wynne Jones,[citation needed] she has cited the influence of Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea books and the Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander in shaping her outlook and prose style.[citation needed]

She was diagnosed with ALS in 2014 and died on 19 November 2015 in Boston, MA.[2]

Bibliography[]

Spellkey series

  • The Spellkey (1987), jacket by Caldecott-medal winner David Wiesner, also a UK paperback edition from Futura/Macmillan.
  • The Glass Salamander (1989), jacket by Caldecott-medal winner David Wiesner
  • The Books of the Keepers (1993)

All three books were collected into a paperback omnibus edition, The Spellkey Trilogy, published by Baen Books in 1995.

Hatching Magic series U.S. edition jackets by Omar Rayyan

  • (2003; Scholastic Book Club selection; translated into German, Czech, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese, Polish, Thai, and Spanish; additional languages pending)
  • The Dragon of Never-Was (2006)

Other Fiction

References[]

  1. ^ "Ann Downer: Biography". Simon and Schuster. Archived from the original on 23 December 2009. Retrieved 3 March 2010.
  2. ^ "Ann Downer-Hazell". The Somerville Journal.

External links[]

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