Meet the author

Irena Brignull.

Writer · United Kingdom

Irena Brignull: a screenwriter turned author (The Boxtrolls, The Little Prince) who brings a filmmaker's economy and emotional clarity to gentle, reassuring picture-book fables about worry and courage.

Irena Brignull is a British screenwriter and author who came to children's books by way of a distinguished film career. An Oxford English graduate, she was a script executive at the BBC and head of development at Dogstar Films, working on Shakespeare in Love and Captain Corelli's Mandolin, before writing the screenplays for the animated features The Boxtrolls and The Little Prince and the adaptation of David Almond's Skellig. Her picture book The Seed of Doubt, illustrated by Richard Jones, turns the everyday experience of self-doubt into a quietly wise fable: a boy's dreams shrink as a mysterious tree grows, until his father helps him find the courage to climb. She has also written the Hawkweed young-adult novels. Brignull brings a screenwriter's economy and emotional clarity to a gentle, reassuring story for any anxious child.