Deborah Ellis
Deborah has more than twenty books to her credit. She has won the Governor General’s Award, the Ruth Schwartz Award, the University of California’s Middle East Book Award, Sweden’s Peter Pan Prize, the Jane Addams Children’s Book Award, and the Vicky Metcalf Award for a Body of Work. She has received the Ontario Library Association’s President’s Award for Exceptional Achievement, and she has been named to the Order of Ontario.
Deborah is a passionate advocate for the disenfranchised. She donates most of her royalty income to worthy causes — Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan, Street Kids International, the Children in Crisis Fund of IBBY (International Board on Books for Young People) and UNICEF. She has donated more than one million dollars in royalties from her Breadwinner series alone.
Author's Comment: Hope isn't something that you just wait for; hope is something that you actively go out and seek. As this world gets crazier and crazier, you have to sometimes look for it a lot harder than you do in easier times. Hope is an active thing. The other part of it is that I am one of the most privileged women on the face of the earth. I get to go where I want to. I can live alone if I choose. I can love whom I want to love. I can write and publish, and not be put in jail for it. These are privileges that I am very aware of, especially since so many women don't have the right to drive or to do so many of the things they want to do. I don't really have the right to lose hope; that would be an insult to the women who don't have the rights that I have.
Nationality: Canadian