Jan Mark

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jan Mark (June 22, 1943 - January 16, 2006) was a British writer.

She was christened Janet Marjorie Brisland in Welwyn Garden City in 1943. She started writing in the mid-1970s. She wrote over 50 books beginning at age 33, and is best known as a writer for children.

She won the Carnegie Medal for "Thunder and Lightnings" (1976) and for "Handles" (1983).

She is justly famous for her acutely-observed short stories which do not waste a single word and which show an imaginative use of language. Mark's images conjure up visions. She also wrote novels about seemingly ordinary children in contemporary settings eg Thunder and Lightnings as well as science fiction novels set in their own universes with their own rules. Her last works include the novels Eclipse of the Century and Useful Idiots (see useful idiot).

She was divorced, and is survived by two children.

The title of Thunder and Lightnings, a story set in rural Norfolk, is a play on the British RAF jet fighter the English Electric Lightning and in turn inspired the name of a website of the history of that aeroplane and others of a similar time.[1]

Jan Mark was very popular in Flanders, Belgium, where she participated in an educational project to stimulate teachers of English into using teenage fiction in the classroom. Her Flemish friends devoted a website to her and to her work. [2]