Candy Gourlay author page

Candy Gourlay biography

Candy Gourlay is a Filipino author of children’s books. Before becoming a children’s author, she worked as a journalist, a cartoonist, an American voiceover artist and a web designer.

Her debut novel, Tall Story, won the Crystal Kite Prize for Europe and the National Book Award in the Philippines. Tall Story was nominated for the Carnegie Medal and shortlisted for the Blue Peter Book Award, the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize and the Branford Boase Award. In December 2010, Tall Story was on the Blue Peter Book Awards 2011 shortlist in the Favourite Story category.

Her second novel, Shine, was published by DFB and Random House on 5 September 2013. Shine follows Rosa, a girl who is mute and lives on the island of Mirasol, and the novel weaves myths and ghosts into a modern setting. Shine was shortlisted for the Guardian Children’s Book Prize, and both Tall Story and Shine won the Crystal Kite Prize.

Bone Talk is a historical novel set in the Philippines and was published by David Fickling Books in 2018. The story follows Samkad, a boy from a Bontok community in the Philippine highlands around 1899, as news arrives that Americans are bringing war to his home. Bone Talk was shortlisted for the 2018 Costa Children’s Book Award.

Her other books include the picture books Is It a Mermaid and Mike Falls Up, and Ferdinand (Magellan – First Names), published in paperback by David Fickling Books on 2 April 2020. Wild Song, a companion novel to Bone Talk, was published in hardback on 2 March 2023 and in paperback on 4 January 2024.