Jenny Valentine
Children's writer, Young Adult writer
About
Jenny Valentine is an award-winning writer for children and young adults. Her first book, Finding Violet Park, won the Guardian prize for children’s fiction and was shortlisted for a Carnegie medal. Her second, Broken Soup, was shortlisted for a Waterstones prize and Costa Children’s Book award.
Five of her YA novels have been nominated for the Carnegie. Her work has been published in nineteen languages.
Jenny is a former Hay Festival international fellow. In 2017/18 she spent a year travelling to literary festivals in Europe, Africa and South America where she interviewed young people about their experiences, their present concerns and their hopes for the future. She continues to work with the Hay Festival as part of the Scribblers team, an initiative that brings authors, poets and performers to lead interactive events with students in Years 7–10 from schools across Wales. The events take place in Welsh universities annually. Pupils build stories, ask questions and express themselves through the power of writing.
Jenny’s first play, Turno, was written for the British Council’s Audience Development programme, and performed at the National Theatre in Lima, Peru in 2018.
Jenny has run workshops with the Arvon Foundation and at Moniack Mhor. She is currently working on a middle-grade series and adapting one of her YA novels for the screen.
Before and during her writing career, Jenny worked as a teaching assistant, a bad waiter and a shopkeeper. She has two daughters and is never not reading a book.