People like Sally Gardner

British English paragraph

Sally Gardner is a British children writer and illustrator. She won both the Costa Children's Book Award and the Carnegie Medal for Maggot Moon (Hot Key Books, 2012). Under her pseudonym Wray Delaney she has also written adult novels.

Sally Gardner is the daughter of two lawyers, she was raised in Birmingham, her parents separated and later divorced when she was five. Her mother, Nina Lowry was a barrister and judge at the Old Bailey. Gardner recalls being badly bullied in school, even being nicknamed 'Silly Sally' on account of her then undiagnosed dyslexia. She was formally diagnosed with severe dyslexia at 12 and didn't learn to read until she was 14, with the first book she read in full being Wuthering Heights. Noticed by teachers for her creative flair, she did very well in art college and then in drama college, and worked as a theatre set designer before turning to illustration and writing. She lives in London. In 2019 Sally became an Ambassador for audiobook charity Listening Books.