Michelle Magorian, a prize-winning British author, has produced both fiction and poetry and has created works for audiences ranging from preschoolers to young adults. The author's novels include Good Night, Mr. Tom, Back Home, Not a Swan, and A Spoonful of Jam. She is also an actress and playwright whose stage works include Hello Life!

Born in 1947, in Portsmouth, England, Magorian is the daughter of a Navy man and spent much of her youth in Singapore and Australia before returning to England at the age of nine. By this time she was already writing stories, or, as she told Carousel's Chris Stephenson, she was always "scribbling away." However, initially another career beckoned, that of the stage.

At age nineteen Magorian began studying drama at the Rose Bruford College of Speech and Drama in London, and then later in Paris with well-known mime Marcel Marceau. During this time...