Diana Hendry author page

Diana Hendry biography

Diana Hendry is an English poet, children’s author and short-story writer. She was born on the Wirral and grew up by the sea.

Before turning to full-time writing, Hendry worked as a journalist, including at The Western Mail in Cardiff from 1960 to 1965. She later taught English in a boys’ school and, between 1995 and 1997, tutored creative writing at the University of Bristol.

Her literary output includes more than forty books for children and young adults, ranging from picture books to teenage novels. Her poetry collections span both adult and younger audiences; titles include Making Blue (1995), Borderers (2001), Twelve Lilts: Psalms & Responses (2003) and Late Love & Other Whodunnits (2008).

Hendry’s children’s novel Harvey Angell won the Whitbread Award in 1991. She has held the post of writer-in-residence at Dumfries & Galloway Royal Infirmary (1997–1998). Two of her picture books—The Very Noisy Night and The Very Snowy Christmas—have been adapted for performance by Blunderbus Theatre Company.

She is a regular tutor for the Arvon Foundation and has written a libretto—the cantata The Pied Piper—for choir and small orchestra, premiered in Switzerland in 2012. In 2007, she and her partner, Hamish Whyte, were jointly awarded a Robert Louis Stevenson Fellowship.