Meet the author

Anthony McGowan.

Writer · United Kingdom

Anthony McGowan: Carnegie Medal-winning author of the Brock–Lark quartet — spare, honest, deeply moving Yorkshire novellas about two brothers, ideal for readers who want short and real.

Anthony McGowan is an English author who writes across children's, teen and adult fiction, best known in this age group for The Truth of Things quartet: Brock, Pike, Rook and Lark. Written in spare, plain, deceptively simple prose, these short novellas follow two working-class Yorkshire brothers, Nicky and Kenny, the elder with learning difficulties, through hardship, first love and, in Lark, a life-or-death blizzard on the moors. Lark won the 2020 Carnegie Medal, and its accessible length and unflinching honesty have made the quartet a fixture on school and reluctant-reader lists. McGowan writes hard lives with dry humour, real jeopardy and enormous tenderness, and his Chernobyl survival story Dogs of the Deadlands brings the same unsentimental power to an animal tale. Honest, grown-up fiction for readers who want something short, real and moving.