Diana Hendry

Diana Hendry is a poet, short-story writer and children’s author. She has published five collections of poems — Making Blue (Peterloo, 1995), Borderers (Peterloo, 2001), Twelve Lilts: psalms & responses (Mariscat, 2003), Sparks!, a poetic collaboration with Tom Pow (Mariscat, 2005) and Late Love & Other Whodunnits (Peterloo/Mariscat  2008) — and The Seed-box Lantern: new & selected poems (Mariscat, 2013). Her poems have appeared in many magazines including Poetry Review, the Dark Horse and the London Magazine.

Diana’s short stories have been widely published in journals and anthologies and broadcast on BBC Radio 4. She has written 40 books for children including Harvey Angell (Red Fox, 1991), which won a Whitbread award. The Seeing (Bodley Head, 2012) was shortlisted for a Costa award and a Scottish Children’s Book award. Two of her picture books, The Very Noisy Night (1999, Little Tiger Press) and The Very Snowy Christmas (2005, Little Tiger Press), have been dramatised by Blunderbus Theatre Company. In 2012 Diana wrote the libretto for The Pied Piper, a cantata for choir and small orchestra composed by John Mortimer and performed in Switzerland.

From 1997 to 1998 Diana was writer-in-residence at Dumfries & Galloway Royal Infirmary. She has worked as a journalist, English teacher and tutor in creative writing at the University of Bristol. She’s a regular tutor for the Arvon Foundation, visits schools and gives poetry readings. Diana lives in Edinburgh with her partner, the poet and publisher Hamish Whyte. In 2007 they were awarded a joint Robert Louis Stevenson fellowship.