Guest of the ilb 2006
Joan Lingard was born in
Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1932 but spent her childhood and adolescence in
Belfast before returning to her home city. She worked as a librarian
and then as a teacher after finishing her studies at Moray House
College of Education. Although she had been writing since she was
eleven and always dreamed of becoming a writer, she did not publish her
first novel, »Liam's Daughter« (1963), until she was thirty. Five more
novels followed in swift succession until her first young people's
book, »The Twelfth Day of July« (1970), came out which was the
beginning of an exceptionally successful and prolific career as a
writer for children and adolescents. This volume was the first of a
five-part series about »Kevin and Sadie«, two Northern Irish teenagers
who, despite coming from different religious backgrounds, manage to
form a relationship that goes beyond the limitations of their families.
The book went on to receive the German award ZDF-Preis der Leseratten
sixteen years later, and meanwhile has sold over a million copies. Not
long afterwards Lingard's even more successful sequel »Across the
Barricades« (1972) was awarded the distinguished Buxtehuder Bulle.
Since then she has received many further honours, including an MBE for
her service to literature for young adults.
Lingard's work – which includes novels for adults as well as children
and adolescents and illustrated books for all ages – tends to focus on
the conflict arising from certain traditions and circumstances in which
young adults in particular at first seem helpless. Within the struggle
against these conditions – which often appears as a local search for
traces of the past – the protagonists develop their own conscious
points of view. Apart from the stories with a Northern Irish
background, other works by Lingard hark back to the experiences of her
husband who as a child was forced to flee from Latvia to Canada with
his parents. The four-part »Maggie Series«, in turn, is set in Glasgow
and the Scottish Highlands while Edinburgh provides the location for
children's books such as »Rags and Riches« (1998) and »Glad Rags«
(1990). Others take place in Spain, where Lingard spends a few months
each year, including »A Secret Place« (1998) and »Encarnita's Journey«
(2005), the latest of her fifteen books for adults. This novel narrates
the fate of the beautiful Spanish girl Encarnita, who was born in the
twenties in a village not far from the Sierra Nevada. She receives
language classes from an English poet whose guests have included the
great Virginia Woolf and Lytton Strachey, and who dies at an old age in
Edinburgh. Lingard's novel »The Kiss« (2002) is situated in Paris where
a Scottish student develops an interest in the painter Gwen John – in
particular her affair with Rodin – and begins to mirror this
relationship in her own obsession with her art teacher.
Her latest childrens's book, »The Sign of the Black Dagger« was
published in 2005. Many of Lingard's books are used in English classes
in German schools. The mother of three grown-up daughters lives in
Edinburgh.
© internationales literaturfestival berlin
Joan Lingard online: www.joanlingard.co.uk
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Liam's Daughter
Hodder & Stoughton
London, 1963
The Kiss
Allison & Busby
London, 2003
Encarnita's Journey
Allison & Busby
London, 2005
The Sign of the Black Dagger
Puffin
London, 2005
Tilly and the Wild Badgers
Orchard Books
London, 2006 | 
