Jennifer Donnelly

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Jennifer Donnelly (born 1963 in Port Chester, New York) is a historical fiction author best-known for her novel A Northern Light (published in the UK as A Gathering Light). She has also written The Tea Rose and The Winter Rose, as well as Humble Pie, a picture book for children.

1 Early life
2 Education
3 Career
4 Personal
5 External links

[edit] Early life

Donnelly's grandparents had fled from Dublin, Ireland to the Adirondack region of New York, and her grandmother had worked at a hotel on Big Moose Lake -- later the setting of Donnelly's A Northern Light. Donnelly's own childhood was spent both in Rye (in Westchester County, downstate) and Port Leyden (in Lewis County, upstate).

[edit] Education

Donnelly attended the University of Rochester, majoring in English Literature and European History and graduating Cum laude with distinction in English Literature. She later attended Birkbeck College in London, England.

[edit] Career

Donnelly moved to back to New York, to Brooklyn, at the age of 25. After ten years of work, during which she claims to have been rejected by every publishing house in New York[1], Donnelly published her first novel, The Tea Rose. The Tea Rose is the first book of a trilogy (The Winter Rose being the second, the third yet to be published) based in the 19th Century in London's East End, with ties to the story of Jack the Ripper. She is currently working on the third in the series The Wild Rose, which will follow Willa and Seamie's story.

A Northern Light was her second published novel, and biggest success to date. The young adult novel is based around the infamous murder of Grace Brown by Chester Gillette in the Adirondacks in 1906. This case was earlier the basis for Theodore Dreiser's epic An American Tragedy as well as the film A Place in the Sun.

In 2004, A Northern Light won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, as well as the Carnegie Medal in the UK (where the novel was published as A Gathering Light.)