I don’t really have a CV (resume if you’re American) because I’ve not applied for any jobs. This is a quick history showing how I got to be a children’s writer.

If you feel as I do about the recent past you can bypass all this stuff and skip to the present.

I went to Yateley School in Hampshire where I did the usual bunch of O-levels (that’s Stone Age GCSEs) and 4 A-levels (English, Biology, Maths, Chemistry) and some quaint thing called ‘Use of English’ which was a bizarre English grammar exam needed for Oxbridge entrance in those days. I have since done AS level Italian.

Then in 1978 I went to Trinity College, Cambridge where I did a BA and then a PhD in English. Which gets us to ...

I finished my PhD in 1984. It’s published by Boydell and Brewer (Hunting in Middle English Literature, 1300-1500). It is (or was) the only PhD thesis in Cambridge University Library bound in fuchsia.

While finishing my PhD and for a while afterwards, I worked a few hours a week for McDonnell Douglas writing guides and training materials for architectural software. The rest of the time I taught freelance for Cambridge University (mostly medieval and early Renaissance English and French literature). I left McDonnell Douglas and had a short-term fellowship at York University where I taught much the same stuff as at Cambridge, and also taught on the MA Programme in Medieval Studies. Then I came back to Cambridge and did freelance journalism and technical writing and consultancy. This was mostly for educational computing outfits like Acorn Computers, Iota, Xemplar, and the National Council for Educational Technology (NCET, which became Becta).

I also worked for a balloon in this period. Named Emerald, she lived in my office and went through several incarnations during which she managed our publishing company. We produced esoteric educational software for Acorn computers, including the first UK-sourced hypertext system, the first character-based Chinese text editor and the first Egyptian hieroglyph editor. But Emerald kept bursting and I got bored and so we called it a day. And so started the one and only serious decade...

I started working with the National Extension College (nec). I wrote a large number of courses for them, many on aspects of computing and technology but also on literature and some business topics. I managed small and large publishing projects for them, both paper-based and electronic, including designing and managing most of their largest electronic publishing ventures during the 1990s.

During this time I also wrote a lot of training and open learning materials for other colleges and publishers including:

• learndirect (the Univesity for Industry)
• University of the South Bank
• The Open College
• Sunderland University
• Longman (now Pearsons)
• Macmillan
• Cambridge Training and Development/Oxford University Press.

I wrote a series of books for Dabs Press on various aspects of computer use, some of which won awards. I did a lot of consultancy on education and IT for both nec and learndirect, and on information and interface design for Acorn Computers and other techy companies.

I did quite a bit of corporate training, too – mostly of teachers who needed to use and teach IT, and of print production experts who were having to start using digital methods for the first time. I did a course in traditional and historical typesetting during my PhD and am one of the few people who can use every printing and typesetting technology from 16th century presses to Quark! I also wrote and edited corporate publicity material and newsletters in this period.

At the same time I carried on doing an ever-decreasing amount of work on medieval literature, publishing with

• Cambridge University Pres
• Bristol Classical Press/Duckworth
• Dent Everyman
• Boydell and Brewer
• UFSAL
• The Times (book reviews).

But that was in another country, and besides, the wench is dead.

For the last twelve years I’ve been writing mostly for children, a mixture of non-fiction and fiction. My non-fiction titles are split fairly equally between trade and schools-and-libraries lists for a range of publishers. I write on earth sciences, new technology, science, history, ethics and current culture. There’s a good sprinkling of frivolous topics like mysteries, UFOs, fashion, spying and sleepovers, too. The more serious books draw extensively on my varied background, but the most useful bit of background was developing research skills doing my PhD thesis. I use the web, of course, but also Cambridge University Library, the British Library, the Wellcome Institute Library, the Science Museum Library at Imperial College and Addenbrooke’s Hospital Library in Cambrige. My fiction titles range from first reading books to early teen fiction. I have also written character-led fiction (series written by several authors, published under a single pseudonym).

I publish children’s books with Heinemann, Franklin Watts, Ladybird, Dorling Kindersley, Evans Brothers, Quarto, Chrysalis Children’s Books, Hodder/Wayland, Carlton, Gareth Stevens, Facts on File, Arcturus, World Book, Igloo Books and Marshall Cavendish. I have published adult books with Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, York Notes, Dent, Duckworths, Pearson, Arcturus, National Extension College, learndirect and a number of smaller publishers.

From September 2006 to July 2008 I was a Royal Literary Fund (RLF) Fellow at Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, and from October 2010 to July 2011 at the University of Essex. RLF Fellows hold posts in many UK universities. The remit of the fellows is to help students and staff to develop their writing skills. All RLF Fellows are published writers whose works are deemed to have ‘literary merit’. From September 2010 I have been a Royal Literary Fund Lector, promoting deep and critical reading through weekly reading-aloud groups. In 2010-2011 this was based at Lucy Cavendish College and was for young parents; in October 2011-2012 it is based at U3A, Cambridge.

There’s a full list of books for children, but a few more details about some of them are included in the kids’ books part of the website. There is a list of recent books for adults, too. This website will soon be redesigned with an area dedicated to adult books.

I’m a member of the NUJ, the Society of Authors, the Royal Literary Society, the Scattered Authors Society and a few other groups. I’m also hostess of Thrale’s literary salon in Cambridge and run BookJam, a shared reading group for retired, funded by the RLF and hosted at U3A, Cambridge. I contribute to the multi-author blog, An Awfully Big Blog Adventure, which presents the thoughts of a few scattered children’s authors, and have my own blog as StroppyAuthor. I review picture books for Writeaway and Armadillo, and write occasionally for the The New Humanist. I am on Twitter as @annerooney. Many of my online articles are collected on Posterous.