Deborah Ellis was born Cochrane , Ontario Canada in 1960. She won the Governor General's Award for her first novel, Looking for X. Ellis said that she decided to start writing when she was 11 or 12. Ellis is an active anti-war activist and feminist, and has written many children's books which reflect this. She travelled to Afghanistan in 1997 to interview women in refugee camps, from these interviews she wrote the trilogy which includes The Breadwinner (Parvana), Parvana's Journey, Mud City, and an adult book Women of the Afghan War. While The Breadwinner was inspired by an interview with a mother in a refugee camp, the subsequent books in the trilogy were more imaginitive explorations of how children would survive. The proceeds from her books are donated to charities, such as UNICEF and Street Kids International. She has continued to travel to other countries to gather research for her writing. In her nonfiction works Three Wishes: Palestinian and Israeli Children Speak and Our Songs Our Stories: African Children Talk about AIDS, Ellis uses the stories of children directly. Her most recent publications are I am a Taxi and Sacred Leaf, which are about a young Bolivian boy who gets involved in Boliva's coca industry. In 2006, she was made a member of the Order of Ontario.
External links
- Deborah Ellis profiled at CM Magazine: Canadian Review of Materials
- Discussion about Three Wishes and a ban from some Canadian schools and libraries, online at CBC Words at Large (audio)
