Background
Marcus Sedgwick was born on April 8, 1968, in East Kent, United Kingdom. He has a younger brother Julian Sedgwick.
2019
Marcus Sedgwick at 2019 Hay Festival.
100 Waverley Dr, Wishaw ML2 7EW, United Kingdom
Marcus Sedgwick with pupils from St Aidan’s High School.
Marcus Sedgwick at Royal National Institute of Blind People.
Marcus Sedgwick with Susan Cooper.
Marcus Sedgwick with Susan Cooper.
Marcus Sedgwick with Thomas Taylor.
Shelburne Rd, Cheltenham GL51 6HE, United Kingdom
Marcus Sedgwick at Dean Close School in 2015.
Dalton Terrace, York YO24 4DD, United Kingdom
Marcus Sedgwick with pupils at The Mount School York.
Marcus Sedgwick
Marcus Sedgwick at book signing at the Imperial War Museum with Julian Sedgwick and Alexis Deacon.
Marcus Sedgwick with Caroline Brothers.
Marcus Sedgwick with Chris Riddell.
Marcus Sedgwick
Marcus Sedgwick
Marcus Sedgwick at the interview for Fierce Fiction.
Marcus Sedgwick with Kami Garcia.
Marcus Sedgwick. Photo by Gabriela Covolan Costa.
(Imagine that England is covered with water and Norwich is...)
Imagine that England is covered with water and Norwich is an island. Zoe survives there as best she can. Alone and desperate among gangs, she manages to dig a derelict boat out of the mud and gets away to Eels Island. But it too is full of danger.
https://www.amazon.com/Floodland-Marcus-Sedgwick/dp/1858817633/?tag=2022091-20
2000
(Sig is a boy in a coastal tribe, the Storn, long ago in a...)
Sig is a boy in a coastal tribe, the Storn, long ago in a Northern land. On the day of the wolf hunt, the life of the tribe changes forever, for Sig rescues a small girl, more like the wolves who shelter her than a human. Sig’s family adopts her and names her Mouse, and he becomes a loyal brother to this girl with mysterious powers and a secret past. The shocking discovery of Mouse’s true identity brings to life a terrifying legend and leads to war, betrayal, and Sig’s coming of age as he finds the wit and courage to save his tribe.
https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Horse-Marcus-Sedgwick-ebook/dp/B0012E3J1K/?tag=2022091-20
2001
(It is 1915 and the First World War has only just begun. 1...)
It is 1915 and the First World War has only just begun. 17-year-old Sasha is a well-to-do, sheltered-English girl. Just as her brother Thomas longs to be a doctor, she wants to nurse, yet girls of her class don't do that kind of work. But as the war begins and the hospitals fill with young soldiers, she gets a chance to help. But working in the hospital confirms what Sasha has suspected - she can see when someone is going to die. Her premonitions show her the brutal horrors on the battlefields of the Somme and the faces of the soldiers who will die. And one of them is her brother Thomas. Pretending to be a real nurse, Sasha goes behind the front lines searching for Thomas, risking her own life as she races to find him, and somehow prevent his death.
https://www.amazon.com/Foreshadowing-Marcus-Sedgwick/dp/1444011065/?tag=2022091-20
2005
(When Thomas and his son, Peter, settle in Chust as woodcu...)
When Thomas and his son, Peter, settle in Chust as woodcutters, Tomas digs a channel of fast-flowing waters around their hut, so they have their own little island kingdom. Peter doesn't understand why his father has done this, nor why his father carries a long, battered box, whose mysterious contents he is forbidden to know. But Tomas is a man with a past: a past that is tracking him with deadly intent, and when the dead of Chust begin to rise from their graves, both father and son must face a soulless enemy and a terrifying destiny.
https://www.amazon.com/My-Swordhand-Singing-Marcus-Sedgwick-ebook/dp/B000W916H0/?tag=2022091-20
2006
(When writer Arthur Ransome leaves his unhappy marriage in...)
When writer Arthur Ransome leaves his unhappy marriage in England and moves to Russia to work as a journalist, he has little idea of the violent revolution about to erupt. Unwittingly, he finds himself at its center, tapped by the British to report back on the Bolsheviks even as he becomes dangerously, romantically entangled with Trotsky's personal secretary. Both sides seek to use Arthur to gather and relay information for their own purposes and both grow to suspect him of being a double agent. Arthur wants only to elope far from conflict with his beloved, but her Russian ties make leaving the country nearly impossible. And the more Arthur resists becoming a pawn, the more entrenched in the game he seems to become.
https://www.amazon.com/Blood-Red-Snow-White-Novel-ebook/dp/B01DSWBKH8/?tag=2022091-20
2007
(Peter's ongoing search for the Shadow Queen leads him to ...)
Peter's ongoing search for the Shadow Queen leads him to Venice - the fabled city with lapping waterways, crumbling magnificence, dark, twisting alleyways and surprising piazzas. A city whose beauty disguises many ugly secrets. The Shadow Queen is there, gathering strength, recruiting a new army of the Undead for a final confrontation. Marko and Sorrel meet in Venice for the first time. They must uncover the mystery of what has happened both to Sorrel's father, who is plagued by a strange madness that prevents him from sleeping, and to Marko's father, a doctor, who has mysteriously gone missing after travelling to Venice to help his old friend.
https://www.amazon.com/Kiss-Death-Marcus-Sedgwick-ebook/dp/B003FXCSOU/?tag=2022091-20
2008
(In an isolated cabin, fourteen-year-old Sig is alone with...)
In an isolated cabin, fourteen-year-old Sig is alone with a corpse: his father, who has fallen through the ice and frozen to death only hours earlier. Then comes a stranger claiming that Sig's father owes him a share of a horde of stolen gold. Sig's only protection is a loaded Colt revolver hidden in the cabin's storeroom. The question is, will Sig use the gun, and why?
https://www.amazon.com/Revolver-Marcus-Sedgwick/dp/0312547978/?tag=2022091-20
2009
(Thought provoking as well as intensely scary, Marcus Sedg...)
Thought provoking as well as intensely scary, Marcus Sedgwick's White Crow unfolds in three voices. Rebecca has come to a small seaside village to spend the summer. Ferelith offers to show Rebecca the secrets of the town but at a price. Finally, there's a priest whose descent into darkness illuminates the girls' frightening story.
https://www.amazon.com/White-Crow-Marcus-Sedgwick/dp/1250010292/?tag=2022091-20
2010
(An archaeologist who unearths a mysterious artifact, an a...)
An archaeologist who unearths a mysterious artifact, an airman who finds himself far from home, a painter, a ghost, a vampire, and a Viking: the seven stories in this compelling novel all take place on the remote Scandinavian island of Blessed where a curiously powerful plant that resembles a dragon grows. What binds these stories together? What secrets lurk beneath the surface of this idyllic countryside? And what might be powerful enough to break the cycle of midwinterblood? From award-winning author Marcus Sedgwick comes a book about passion and preservation and ultimately an exploration of the bounds of love.
https://www.amazon.com/Midwinterblood-Marcus-Sedgwick/dp/1250040078/?tag=2022091-20
2011
(Laureth Peak's father has taught her to look for recurrin...)
Laureth Peak's father has taught her to look for recurring events, patterns, and numbers - a skill at which she's remarkably talented. Her secret: She is blind. But when her father goes missing, Laureth and her seven-year-old brother, Benjamin, are thrust into a mystery that takes them to New York City, where surviving will take all her skill at spotting the amazing, shocking, and sometimes dangerous connections in a world full of darkness.
https://www.amazon.com/She-Not-Invisible-Marcus-Sedgwick/dp/1250056985/?tag=2022091-20
2013
(Set in a near-future Britain, Dark Satanic Mills tracks a...)
Set in a near-future Britain, Dark Satanic Mills tracks a young girl's journey from the flooded landmarks of London to the vast, scorched and abandoned hills of the north. Framed for a murder she did not commit, the innocent and beautiful Christie has no other choice but to run for her life. Both a cautionary tale and a rip-roaring road trip, Dark Satanic Mills is altogether an intelligent, captivating and thrilling ride - The Wizard of Oz for a new generation told in exhilarating shades of light and dark.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dark-Satanic-Mills-Marcus-Sedgwick/dp/1406329886
2013
(In prehistory, a girl picks up a charred stick and makes ...)
In prehistory, a girl picks up a charred stick and makes the first written signs. Tens of centuries later, the treacherous waters of Golden Beck take Anna, who people call a witch. At the beginning of the twentieth century, in the halls of a Long Island hospital at the beginning of the twentieth century, a mad poet watches the ocean and knows the horrors it hides. And there in the far future, as an astronaut faces his destiny on the first spaceship sent from earth to colonize another world. Each of the characters in these mysterious linked stories embarks on a journey of discovery and survival; carried forward through the spiral of time, none will return to the same place.
https://www.amazon.com/Ghosts-Heaven-Marcus-Sedgwick/dp/1250073677/?tag=2022091-20
2014
(1963. Foxgrove School near Stockbridge, Massachusetts. On...)
1963. Foxgrove School near Stockbridge, Massachusetts. One of the oldest and finest academies in the country - but what really goes on behind closed doors? Nathaniel Drake, the new young English teacher, Isobel Milewski, the quiet girl who loved to draw spirals, her fingers stained with green ink, Jack Lewis, who lent Isobel books - just words, just ink on paper, Margot Leya, the girl with those eyes - who are they, what part have they played in killing the dead?
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1780622392/?tag=prabook0b-20
2015
(On the outskirts of Juarez, Arturo scrapes together a liv...)
On the outskirts of Juarez, Arturo scrapes together a living working odd jobs and staying out of sight. But his friend Faustino is in trouble: he’s stolen money from the narcos to smuggle his girlfriend and her baby into the US, and needs Arturo's help to get it back. To help his friend, Arturo must face the remorseless world of drug and human traffickers that surrounds him, and contend with a murky past. Hovering over his story is the unsparing divinity Santa Muerte, Saint Death - and the relentless economic and social inequalities that haunt the border between Mexico and its rich northern neighbor. Crafted with poetry and cinematic pace and narrated with cold fury, Saint Death is a provocative tour de force from three-time Printz Award honoree Marcus Sedgwick.
https://www.amazon.com/Saint-Death-Novel-Marcus-Sedgwick-ebook/dp/B01M0CJKKA/?tag=2022091-20
2016
(In Paris in the year 1899, Marcel Després is arrested for...)
In Paris in the year 1899, Marcel Després is arrested for the murder of his wife and transferred to the famous Salpetriere Asylum. And there the story might have stopped. But the doctor assigned to his care soon realizes this is no ordinary patient: Marcel Després, Mister Memory, is a man who cannot forget. And the policeman assigned to his case soon realizes that something else is at stake: For why else would the criminal have been hurried off to the hospital, and why are his superiors so keen for the whole affair to be closed? This crime involves something bigger and stranger than a lovers' fight, something with links to the highest and lowest establishments in France. The policeman and the doctor between them must unravel the mystery - but the answers lie inside Marcel's head. And how can he tell what is significant when he remembers every detail of every moment of his entire life?
https://www.amazon.com/Mister-Memory-Novel-Marcus-Sedgwick/dp/1681773406/?tag=2022091-20
2016
(Do monsters always stay in the book where they were born?...)
Do monsters always stay in the book where they were born? Are they content to live out their lives on paper, and never step foot into the real world?' The Villa Diodati, on the shore of Lake Geneva, 1816: the Year without Summer. As Byron, Polidori, and Mr. and Mrs. Shelley shelter from the unexpected weather, old ghost stories are read and new ghost stories imagined. Born by the twin brains of the Shelleys is Frankenstein, one of the most influential tales of horror of all time. In a remote mountain house, high in the French Alps, an author broods on Shelley's creation. Reality and perception merge, fuelled by poisoned thoughts. Humankind makes monsters; but who really creates who?
https://www.amazon.com/Monsters-Deserve-Marcus-Sedgwick-author/dp/1788542304/?tag=2022091-20
2018
(Scarlett Hart, the orphaned daughter of two legendary mon...)
Scarlett Hart, the orphaned daughter of two legendary monster hunters, is determined to carry on in her parents’ footsteps - even if the Royal Academy for the Pursuit and Eradication of Zoological Eccentricities says she’s too young to fight perilous horrors. But whether it's creepy mummies or a horrid hound, Scarlett won’t back down, and with the help of her loyal butler and a lot of monster-mashing gadgets, she’s on the case. With her parent’s archrival, Count Stankovic, ratting her out to T.R.A.P.E.Z.E. and taking all the monster-catching rewards for himself, it’s getting hard for Scarlett to do what she was born to do. And when more monsters start mysteriously manifesting than ever before, Scarlett knows she has to get to the bottom of it and save the city whatever the danger.
https://www.amazon.com/Scarlett-Hart-Monster-Marcus-Sedgwick/dp/1626720266/?tag=2022091-20
2018
(Ash boards a Greyhound bus heading to the place where Bly...)
Ash boards a Greyhound bus heading to the place where Bly was last seen: Snowflake, Arizona. Six thousand feet up in the wide red desert, Ash meets Mona, her dog, her goat, and her neighbors, and finds stepbrother Bly, too. In their ramshackle homes, the walls lined with tinfoil, almost all the residents of Snowflake are sick. But this isn’t any ordinary sickness: the chemicals and technologies of modern life are poisoning them. They call themselves canaries, living warning signs that humans have pushed the environment too far, except no one seems to be taking their warnings seriously. The healthy “normies” of Snowflake have written them off as a bunch of eccentrics, and when Ash too falls ill, the doctor’s response is “It’s all in your mind.” Snowflake, AZ contemplates illness and health - both our own and our planet’s. As Ash lives through a cycle of illness and recovery and loss, the world beyond is succumbing to its own affliction: a breakdown of civilization only distantly perceived by Ash and the isolated residents of Snowflake, from which there may or may not be a chance for recovery. This provocative novel by one of our most admired storytellers explores the resilience of love and community in the face of crisis.
https://www.amazon.com/Snowflake-AZ-Marcus-Sedgwick/dp/132400441X/?tag=2022091-20
2019
(Brothers Marcus and Julian Sedgwick team up to pen this h...)
Brothers Marcus and Julian Sedgwick team up to pen this haunting tale of another pair of brothers, caught between life and death in World War II. Harry Black, a conscientious objector, artist, and firefighter battling the blazes of German bombing in London in 1944, wakes in the hospital to the news that his soldier brother, Ellis, has been killed. In the delirium of his wounded state, Harry’s mind begins to blur the distinctions between the reality of war-torn London, the fiction of his unpublished sci-fi novel, and the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. Driven by visions of Ellis still alive and a sense of poetic inevitability, Harry sets off on a search for his brother that will lead him deep into the city’s Underworld. With otherworldly paintings by Alexis Deacon depicting Harry’s surreal descent further into the depths of hell, this eerily beautiful blend of prose, verse, and illustration delve into love, loyalty, and the unbreakable bonds of brotherhood as it builds to a fierce indictment of mechanized warfare.
https://www.amazon.com/Voyages-Underworld-Orpheus-Marcus-Sedgwick/dp/1536204374/?tag=2022091-20
2019
(Raven Mysteries series consists of six books: Flood and F...)
Raven Mysteries series consists of six books: Flood and Fang (2009), Ghosts and Gadgets (2009), Lunatics and Luck (2010), Vampires and Volt (2010), Magic and Mayhem (2011), Diamonds and Doom (2011). Edgar is alarmed when he sees a nasty looking black tail slinking under the castle walls. But his warnings to the inhabitants of the castle go unheeded: Lord Valentine Otherhand is too busy trying to invent the unthinkable and discover the unknowable; his wife, Minty, is too absorbed in her latest obsession - baking; and ten-year-old Cudweed is running riot with his infernal pet monkey. Only Solstice, the black-haired, poetry-writing Otherhand daughter, seems to pay any attention. As the lower stories of the castle begin mysteriously to flood, and kitchen maids continue to go missing, the family comes ever closer to the owner of the black tail.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B011M9514M/?tag=prabook0b-20
Marcus Sedgwick was born on April 8, 1968, in East Kent, United Kingdom. He has a younger brother Julian Sedgwick.
As a teenager, Marcus Sedgwick was shy, quiet, introspective, gawky, spotty, timid, scared, and nervous. High school was pretty traumatic for him. He went to a type of English school called a Grammar School. The violence came from not just the other boys (it was a single-sex school) but from the masters too. So his mental energies were pointed in the direction of the home where he was much happier because he came from a loving family. He preferred wearing black clothes and became a goth. He was moved by melancholy music and interested in vampires, graveyards, and other dark fantasy themes.
As an older teenager, music began to be really important to Sedgwick. He was very much into classical music. He did little sport as a teenager but he read a lot. The most important book of his life then was the Gormenghast trilogy by Mervyn Peake. When he arrived at university, he decided that he couldn’t go on being so shy. He decided that he would pretend he wasn’t shy. And after about three months went by, he realized he was no longer shy, he was normal.
Before beginning his writing career, Marcus Sedwick worked as a bookseller at Heffers children's bookshop in Cambridge, England; as a children's book publisher at Ragged Bears in Somerset, England; as an editor at Templar Publishing in Dorking, England; and as a sales manager at Walker Books in London, England. He began writing seriously in 1994. His first book, Floodland, was published in 2000. It tells the tale of Zoe, who lives on her own on an island that used to be part of England before global warming caused the sea to rise, and his second book, Witch Hill (2001), is about Jamie, a boy whose house is destroyed by fire. His 2001 book The Dark Horse borrows its tone from Norse myth.
Staying away from the magical elements marking his earlier novels, Sedgwick infuses the novel with historical possibilities and raises modern concerns about the morality of war. Sedgwick's next pair of novels return to the themes of magic and its dangers. Sedgwick returned to a more modern setting with Cowards (2003), a novel of two young men who refuse to fight during World War I, because they believe killing is wrong. Labeled by many as cowards, the pair are imprisoned, tortured, and eventually killed due to their beliefs. The Book of Dead Days (2003) and its sequel, Dark Flight Down (2004), tell of the search of Boy, Willow and Valerian, and their capture by Emperor Frederick.
Though much lighter in tone than his novels, Sedgwick's picture books also involve magical occurrences. A Winter's Tale, published in the United States as A Christmas Wish, tells the story of a boy who lives in a fairly warm climate who wishes for snow for Christmas so that his home will look like the world in his snow globe. In the night, his wish is granted, and snow surrounds his home, freezing the nearby lake to allow the boy to ice skate. Characters such as gingerbread men, polar bears, dancers, living snowmen, and a snow wizard - presumably the one responsible for the magic - appear to fill the snowy wonderland.
His other books include The Foreshadowing (2005), My Swordhand Is Singing (2006), Blood Red, Snow White (2007), White Crow (2010), She Is Not Invisible (2013), The Ghosts of Heaven (2015), Saint Death (2016), The Monsters We Deserve (2018) and other. He also co-wrote a novel Dark Satanic Mills with his brother Julian Sedgwick. His more recent book is Snowflake, AZ (2019) about health - our own and our planet’s - and the stigma of illness.
Marcus was also a writer in residence at Bath Spa University for three years and has taught creative writing at Arvon and Ty Newydd. He has judged numerous books awards, including the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize and the Costa Book Awards. He performs as a drummer and actor with the International Band of Mystery, a group that pays tribute to the "Austin Powers" movies. He has illustrated some of his books and has provided wood-engravings for a couple of private press books. Marcus Sedgwick is also the drummer in the Brighton-based band, Garrett.
Marcus Sedgwick is the recipient of 2001 Branford Boase Award, 2007 Booktrust Teenage Prize, and 2014 Michael L. Printz Award. He was shortlisted for Guardian Children's Fiction Prize, Carnegie Medal, Blue Peter Book Award, Sheffield Book Award, and Edgar Allan Poe Award. He was also nominated for Edgar Allan Poe Award, Independent Reading Association Award, Portsmouth Book Award, and Guardian Book Award.
(An archaeologist who unearths a mysterious artifact, an a...)
2011(Scarlett Hart, the orphaned daughter of two legendary mon...)
2018(Do monsters always stay in the book where they were born?...)
2018(Peter's ongoing search for the Shadow Queen leads him to ...)
2008(When writer Arthur Ransome leaves his unhappy marriage in...)
2007(When Thomas and his son, Peter, settle in Chust as woodcu...)
2006(Set in a near-future Britain, Dark Satanic Mills tracks a...)
2013(In an isolated cabin, fourteen-year-old Sig is alone with...)
2009(Brothers Marcus and Julian Sedgwick team up to pen this h...)
2019(Laureth Peak's father has taught her to look for recurrin...)
2013(In Paris in the year 1899, Marcel Després is arrested for...)
2016(On the outskirts of Juarez, Arturo scrapes together a liv...)
2016(Thought provoking as well as intensely scary, Marcus Sedg...)
2010(Ash boards a Greyhound bus heading to the place where Bly...)
2019(In prehistory, a girl picks up a charred stick and makes ...)
2014(Sig is a boy in a coastal tribe, the Storn, long ago in a...)
2001(Imagine that England is covered with water and Norwich is...)
2000(It is 1915 and the First World War has only just begun. 1...)
2005(1963. Foxgrove School near Stockbridge, Massachusetts. On...)
2015(Raven Mysteries series consists of six books: Flood and F...)
Marcus Sedgwick prefers real books. If he reads a digital book he does not feel he has lived in the story in the same way. His favorite book is The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. He loves Moby Dick by Herman Melville, it’s the book he can read over and over. He also loves Artur Schnitzler’s writing. Alan Garner’s book The Voice that Thunders has had the biggest impact on his career.
Quotations:
"If I had told myself that one day I would be able to give a presentation to several hundred people for an hour or so without feeling nervous, I would have been sure I was lying."
"I love fairy tales, and folk tales of all kinds, from all cultures and all times. I think they have deep resonance for us, and I have always worked, both explicitly and more subconsciously, to incorporate their rhythms and tropes into my work. There are rich veins of story to be mined, and adapted and plundered."
"Music is something I love almost more than I love words. It’s a close fight between the two. But rather than let it be a fight, I have tried to let music into my head to color my imagination and to stir my thoughts. I love (almost) all forms of music. It is my belief that the very best of any genre is worth listening to, and as to what it is that resonates for me - it has to be something that is authentic. So I can’t listen to mass-produced chart pap, although I can listen very happily to great pop music if it has something in its heart that is true. I tend to like slightly more obscure pieces of music than the mainstream as a result, but that’s not deliberate - as I say, if a piece of pop music is great, I will happily listen to it as well as the weirdest thing on my iPhone."
"I read in the bath, in bed, on the sofa, on my fainting couch, on the recliner on the balcony outside out the bedroom, and just grab whatever time I can."
"Reading fiction makes you more empathetic, more tolerant and in general kinder."
"There's always a third choice in life. Even if you think you're stuck between two impossible choices, there's always a third way. You just have to look for it."
"If I were dead, I wouldn't be sad, and I wouldn't be glad, because I wouldn't be."
Marcus has a daughter Alice.
Julian Sedgwick was born in 1966. He resolved to become a writer at an early age. His first book for children Mysterium: The Black Dragon was published in July 2013 and won the Rotherham Children’s Book Award. The second and third installments of the trilogy The Palace of Memory and The Wheel of Life and Death appeared in 2014. A lifelong interest in the arts and culture of China and Japan has influenced much of his work, as has his fascination with performance, street art, and circus. Julian lives near Ely, Cambridgeshire, with his wife and two sons.