The German author, Cornelia Funke was born 1958 in Dorsten,
Westphalia. Following university, she worked for three years as a
social worker in an educational project, working with children from
difficult backgrounds. Following a post-graduate course in book
illustration at the Hamburg State College of Design, she worked as a
designer of board games and as an illustrator of children's books.
Disappointment in the way some of the stories were told, combined with
her desire to draw fabulous creatures and magical worlds, rather than
familiar situations of school and home, she was inspired to write her
own stories for young readers.
During her time as a social worker, she had worked with children
from deprived backgrounds and discovered the sorts of stories that
grasped their imaginations. These were the stories she wanted to write
– ones that would appeal to bookish children and to inspire those
children who hadn’t had yet had positive reading experiences.
As a reader, Cornelia has always loved good fantasy, particularly
British fantasy authors such as J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings,
C. S. Lewis Chronicles of Narnia, and J. M Barrie’s Peter Pan.
Cornelia Funke’s own success is now international, demonstrating the
universal appeal – and power – of her storytelling.
Cornelia Funke researches for each novel meticulously. For example,
before writing Inkheart, she researched about booksellers, book
collectors, book thieves and even book murderers as well as reading
about martens and fire eaters. She then imagined the characters and
the places they might go, writes down plot lines for the first 20
chapters. Then, and only then - after about six months – she writes
the first sentence. A major novel will take her about a year to write.
She always does her own sketches – in pen and ink (her grandfather was
a famous etcher), she creates a picture of her own characters to help
her write about them.
Three of the four novels she has published with Scholastic are
being made into movies – The Thief Lord, Inkheart and Dragon
Rider! Inkspell is her newest novel that was published in
Fall 2005.
As of 2006 she lives in Los Angeles with her 16-year-old daughter Anna and 11-year-old son, Ben. Sadly, her husband, Rolf, died of cancer in March 2006. They had been married for 26 years. A letter from Cornelia on her website.
This biography was last updated on 10/06/2006.
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