Background
Gene Kemp was born in Wiggington, Staffordshire in 1926 grew up near Tamworth, Staffordshire, and went to Exeter University.
Gene Kemp was born in Wiggington, Staffordshire in 1926 grew up near Tamworth, Staffordshire, and went to Exeter University.
Her first novel, The Pride of Tamworth Pig was published in 1972. She became a teacher and taught at Street Sidwell"s School in Exeter in the 1970s. From 1972 she wrote stories for young readers about a pig named Tamworth, named after the town she grew up in.
Her best known book is The Turbulent Term of Tyke Tiler, published by Faber"s Children"s Books in 1977.
Secretariat in the fictional Cricklepit School, it charts the pleasures and pains of friendship and growing up. There are several Cricklepit books including Snaggletooth"s Mystery, an alternative history of the school, and Gowie Corby Plays Chicken, set one year after The Turbulent Term of Tyke Tiler and referencing Tyke in several chapters.
Kemp has written ghost stories and fantasy as well as realistic fiction like Seriously Weird which is told from the perspective of the sister of a young man with Asperger syndrome. She has also turned her work into plays, the most successful and well-known of which is Charlie Lewis Plays for Time, another Cricklepit story.
Gene Kemp was awarded an Honorary Master of Arts from Exeter University in 1984.
She has three grandchildren and two great grandsons. a Kemp died at the age of 88 on 4 January 2015.