Bio: Joan Aiken (1924?2004) was born in Rye, Sussex, England, into a literary family: her father was the poet and writer Conrad Aiken and her siblings the novelists Jane Aiken Hodge and John Aiken. After her parents? divorce, her mother married the popular English writer Martin Armstrong. Aiken began writing at the age of five and her first collection of stories, All You?ve Ever Wanted (which included the first Armitage family stories), was published when she was eighteen. After her first husband?s death, Aiken supported her family by copyediting at Argosy and working at an advertising agency before turning full time to writing fiction. She went on to write for Vogue, Good Housekeeping, Vanity Fair, Women?s Own, and many other magazines. She wrote over a hundred books (including The Way to Write for Children) and was perhaps best known for the dozen novels in The Wolves of Willoughby Chase series. She received the Guardian and Edgar Allan Poe awards for fiction and in 1999 she was awarded an MBE for her contributions to children?s literature. Find out more about her at www.joanaiken.com.