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SUSAN COOPER

Susan Cooper is an English novelist; screenwriter and playwright who began her professional life as the first woman to edit the Oxford University newspaper, Cherwell. After seven years as a reporter and feature writer on the London Sunday Times, she married an American and moved to the U.S.A., where she acquired three stepchildren, produced two children and wrote a column for nine years for the British morning newspaper The Western Mail. When she had any spare time, she wrote books.

Of her twenty-two books, the best known are five fantasy novels in a sequence named The Dark Is Rising, published for young adults. Among them, these five have won the Newbery Medal in the U.S.A., two Carnegie Honor Awards in Britain, and assorted other prizes, and have been translated into twelve languages. Susan Cooper has also written nine books for younger children, including the best-selling The Boggart, short listed for the Carnegie Medal and recorded by Listening Library on an award-winning audiotape, and its long-awaited sequel, The Boggart and the Monster.

Susan Cooper has been writing songs, plays and verse for Revels since 1975. Her other work for stage and screen -- in collaboration with the actor Hume Cronyn -- includes a play with songs, Foxfire, which ran for seven months on Broadway in 1982-83, and a screen adaptation of Harriet Arnowís The Dollmaker, which starred Jane Fonda, and won the Humanitas Prize and an Emmy nomination in 1984. Her television screenplays of Foxfire and To Dance With The White Dog appeared in the Hallmark Hall of Fame series and are available on video. Cooper's adaptation of Foxfire for television won Jessica Tandy an Emmy for her performance and earned the writer an Emmy nomination. An adaptation of Terry Kayís novel To Dance With the White Dog won Hume Cronyn a Tony award for his performance and her adaptation of the play for television was the final TV film that combined the talents of Susan Cooper, Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy (Jessica Tandy died in September 1994).

In July 1996 Susan Cooper married Hume Cronyn, her longtime friend and writing partner, making their home in Connecticut. Cronyn passed away in June, 2003. Susan now lives in Massachusetts.

Susan Cooper's poem The Shortest Day, which has become a staple of Revels productions, is strictly copyrighted and may not be published on the internet. For any other use, application should be made to Revels, Inc.