Kevin Crossley-Holland
Kevin Crossley-Holland is a well-known poet and prize-winning author for children. His books include Waterslain Angels, a detective story set in north Norfolk in 1955, and Moored Man: A Cycle of North Norfolk Poems; Gatty's Tale, a medieval pilgrimage novel; and the Arthur trilogy (The Seeing Stone, At the Crossing-Places and King of the Middle March), which combines historical fiction with the retelling of Arthurian legend.
The Seeing Stone won the Guardian Children’s Fiction Award and the Smarties Prize Bronze Medal. The Arthur trilogy has won worldwide critical acclaim and has been translated into 21 languages.
Crossley-Holland has translated Beowulf from the Anglo-Saxon, and his retellings of traditional tales include The Penguin Book of Norse Myths and British Folk Tales (reissued as The Magic Lands). His collaborations with composers include two operas with Nicola Lefanu ("The Green Children" and "The Wildman") and one with Rupert Bawden, "The Sailor’s Tale"; song cycles with Sir Arthur Bliss and William Mathias; and a carol with Stephen Paulus for King’s College, Cambridge. His play, The Wuffings, (co-authored with Ivan Cutting) was produced by Eastern Angles in 1997.
He often lectures abroad on behalf of the British Council, regularly leads sessions for teachers and librarians, and visits primary and secondary schools. He offers poetry and prose workshops and talks on the Anglo-Saxons and Vikings, King Arthur, heroines and heroes, and myth, legend and folk-tale.
After seven years teaching in Minnesota, where he held an Endowed Chair in the Humanities, Kevin Crossley-Holland returned to the north Norfolk coast in East Anglia, where he now lives.
He has a Minnesotan wife, Linda, two sons (Kieran and Dominic) and two daughters (Oenone and Eleanor). He is an Honorary Fellow of St. Edmund Hall, Oxford, a patron of the Society of Storytelling and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
“You can teach someone a skill but you can't teach them spirit.”
“Fearlessness is better than a faint-heart for any man who puts his nose out of doors. The length of my life and the day of my death were fated long ago.”
“Lif and Lifthrasir will have children. Their children will have children. There will be life and new life, life everywhere on earth. That was the end; and this is the beginning.”