Background
Franny Billingsley was born on July 3, 1954, in Chicago, Illinois, United States. She was the daughter of Patrick Paul and Ruth Thomas Billingsley. Her dad worked as a professor of mathematics and statistics at the University of Chicago.
1976
419 Boston Ave, Medford, MA 02155, USA
Billingsley graduated from Tufts University in 1976. Franny got a Bachelor of Arts.
1979
765 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA 02215, USA
Billingsley graduated from Boston University Law School in 1979. Franny earned a Juris Doctor.
Author visits Carbondale schools.
Franny Billingsley reads from Chime.
1976
419 Boston Ave, Medford, MA 02155, USA
Billingsley graduated from Tufts University in 1976. Franny got a Bachelor of Arts.
1979
765 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA 02215, USA
Billingsley graduated from Boston University Law School in 1979. Franny earned a Juris Doctor.
Franny Billingsley reads from Chime.
Author visits Carbondale schools.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001MPNIME/?tag=2022091-20
2000
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01F9G24WQ/?tag=2022091-20
2001
(At home, in the Mouse House, Baby Boo-Boo gets no respect...)
At home, in the Mouse House, Baby Boo-Boo gets no respect. Just look at her name: Baby Boo-Boo. She's no baby! The word drives her wild in a big, bad way. And here's Mama Mouse calling, always calling after her, "Baby! Where are you, Baby?" It's humiliating. Mice (and other small persons) will understand what Big Bad Boo-Boo does. It's quite naughty.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1416906010/?tag=2022091-20
2008
(Before Briony's stepmother died, she made sure Briony bla...)
Before Briony's stepmother died, she made sure Briony blamed herself for all the family's hardships. Now Briony has worn her guilt for so long it's become a second skin. She often escapes to the swamp, where she tells stories to the Old Ones, the spirits who haunt the marshes. But only witches can see the Old Ones, and in her village, witches are sentenced to death. Briony lives in fear her secret will be found out, even as she believes she deserves the worst kind of punishment. Then Eldric comes along with his golden lion eyes and mane of tawny hair. He's as natural as the sun, and treats her as if she's extraordinary. And everything starts to change. As many secrets as Briony has been holding, there are secrets even she doesn't know.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004H0M8M2/?tag=2022091-20
2011
Franny Billingsley was born on July 3, 1954, in Chicago, Illinois, United States. She was the daughter of Patrick Paul and Ruth Thomas Billingsley. Her dad worked as a professor of mathematics and statistics at the University of Chicago.
Billingsley graduated from Tufts University in 1976. Franny got a Bachelor of Arts. She graduated from Boston University Law School in 1979. Franny earned a Juris Doctor.
After Franny’s graduation from Boston University Law school in 1979, she worked for 5 years as a lawyer - a profession which Franny “despised.” In 1983, Billingsley visited her sister in Barcelona, Spain where she was “entranced by a lifestyle in which people did not make a lot of money yet lived richly and artfully.” Realizing that Franny needed to change her life, Billingsley quit her job and moved to Spain with all of her favorite children's books. “Books like A Wrinkle in Time, Harriet the Spy, and The Narnia Chronicles seemed like the perfect antidote to hideously wearisome legal documents,” remembers Billingsley, who began writing children's books while living in Spain.
When Billingsley returned to the United States, she took a job as the children's book-buyer at 57th Street Books, a major independent bookseller on the South Side of Chicago. “I worked at the bookstore for twelve years and I loved it because it helped me get back to the things that matter to me: people, ideas, and imagination. I wrote throughout this period. My early books were simply awful, but I did not let rejections and criticism stop me from writing. I worked hard at learning how to write and finding my strengths. It was not until I began writing fantasy that I found my voice. I believe that, ultimately, talent is less important to writing a good book than is determination.”
Franny Billingsley lives in Chicago with her family and currently writes children's books full-time. Then she worked on the faculty of Vermont College of Fine Arts until the summer of 2012, when she moved to Mexico. Franny now works with private students and offers a semester of private study, modeled on the low-residency MFA programs, in addition to manuscript critiques. In addition, Franny has a particular interest in speaking to school groups in Texas.
Billingsley received the PEN/Phyllis Naylor Working Writer Fellowship in 2003, which is awarded to an author of children's or young-adult fiction of literary merit to complete a manuscript. Her most recent novel, Chime, was nominated for the National Book Award. Her novel The Folk Keeper won the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award and the Mythopoeic Award.
(Before Briony's stepmother died, she made sure Briony bla...)
2011(At home, in the Mouse House, Baby Boo-Boo gets no respect...)
2008Quotations: “In the beginning my characters were sort of amorphous. They were too beautiful and too politically correct, and I had to make them into real human beings. And the more I worked on them, the more I discovered their little faults. In Well Wished Nuria was originally a goody-two shoes, and I didn’t like her. But after several years of writing I began to ask, ‘What happens if she breaks a rule, like Little Red Riding Hood or Sleeping Beauty do in their stories?’ It was only after Nuria became the kind of character who breaks the rules that she began to speak to me. I started to understand who she was. ... It was after that after I understood what the demands of the plot were, that she really began to speak to me.” The same sort of developmental process would happen after Billingsley went to work on her second novel, The Folk Keeper."
Franny Billingsley was a member of American Booksellers for Children, Society Children's Book Writers and Illustrators. In 2000 Franny became a member of Mythopoeic Society. She was also a member of Phi Beta Kappa.
Franny was rather shy and solitary. She was a huge reader, and often read. Billingsley loved and still does, sort of adventurous and/or brooding romances. Franny has stubbornness and determination.
Quotes from others about the person
"Once in a blue moon someone writes a splendidly original fantasy, one that haunts us like an indelible dream." - Boston Globe-Horn Book Award Committee.
"Billingsley takes the time to develop a layered narrative adorned with linguistic filigree - she is one of the great prose stylists of the field, moving from one sparklingly unexpected image to the next and salting her story with quicksilver dialogue." - Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review.
"Billingsley creates a consistently complex fantasy world that steps just beyond the familiar into wonder... Breathtakingly imaginative, with an earthy magic that grounds it in passion, this is sophisticated fantasy from a powerful pen." - The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books
Franny married Richard H. J. Pettengill on June 18, 1988. They had got children: Miranda Pettengill, Nathaniel Pettengill.
