Patrick Ness (from an idea by Siobhan Dowd)

Biography

Patrick Ness (born 1971 in Fort Bragg, Virginia; raised in Washington state; lives in London) is an American-British author best known for the Chaos Walking trilogy and A Monster Calls. Siobhan Dowd (1960-2007) was an Irish-English children's author who conceived the novel's premise — a monster visiting a boy whose mother is dying — but died of breast cancer at forty-seven before writing it. Dowd's publisher, Walker Books, asked Ness to write the novel from Dowd's concept. Ness has described the experience as one of the most significant creative challenges of his career: writing a book about a mother dying of cancer when the book itself was born from a woman dying of cancer. The meta-grief is inextricable from the text.

Patrick Ness (from an idea by Siobhan Dowd) at a glance