Anna Wilson

Anna Wilson is a writer for both children and adults. She has written over fifty books for children ranging from picture books to fiction and nonfiction for young readers. Her chapter book series, Vlad the World’s Worst Vampire (Stripes, 2018), has been translated into twelve languages. The stories explore a child’s burgeoning self-awareness and the effects of being seen as an outsider. Anna’s most recent nonfiction title, Nature Month-by-Month: a children’s almanac (Nosy Crow and The National Trust, 2019), was shortlisted for the 2019 ALCS Educational Writers’ award and continues to be updated every year. Much of Anna’s writing investigates the importance of family and identity and also deals with our relationship with the natural world. Her memoir, A Place for Everything: my mother, autism and me (HarperCollins, 2020), was inspired by her mother’s late diagnosis of autism at the age of 72 and the impact of this on her mother’s mental decline and its effect on the wider family. After reading Modern Languages at Cambridge, Anna was a fiction editor for Macmillan Children’s Books and HarperCollins. Since 2013 she has lectured in Creative Writing for Bath Spa University, City University of London and the Arvon Foundation. Her tutoring has seen both undergraduate and postgraduate writers grow in confidence and gain their own publishing deals. She now lives in Cornwall where she is researching and writing about the life of her husband’s grandfather, Dr David Thomson, who spent much of his career developing an early prototype of the flu vaccine.

Anna Wilson began her career as an editor at Macmillan, but quickly turned her attention to writing her own books and has now published over 50 titles. Anna has written many books for children which have been translated into several languages. She has also published a memoir: A Place for Everything – my mother, autism and me, reviewed as “a seminal work in this area” by the world expert in autism in women, Professor Tony Attwood. Anna also has extensive experience in leading creative writing workshops in schools. She was an Associate Lecturer at Bath Spa University for many years and was the RLF Writing Fellow at Exeter Penryn from 2021-2023.