Deborah Ellis
| Deborah Ellis | |
|---|---|
Deborah Ellis in Renaissance, Florida, 2011.
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| Born |
August 7, 1960 Cochrane, Ontario |
| Occupation | Writer, activist |
| Nationality | Canadian |
| Notable works |
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Deborah Ellis CM OOnt (born August 7, 1960) is a Canadian author and activist.
Born in Cochrane, Ontario, Canada, Ellis and her family moved several times during her childhood due to her parent's work. Ellis decided to start writing when she was 11 or 12 years old.
Much of her work as a writer has been inspired by her travels and conversations with people from around the world and their stories. She has held many jobs advocating for the peace movement and the anti-war movement.
She travelled to Pakistan in 1997 to interview refugees at an Afghan refugee camp. From these interviews, she wrote The Breadwinner series, which includes The Breadwinner (2001), a book about a girl named Parvana,Parvana's Journey (2002), its sequel,Mud City (2003), about Shauzia, Parvana's best friend, and My Name is Parvana (2011), the final book in the series. While The Breadwinner was inspired by an interview with a mother and a girl who disguised herself as a boy in a refugee camp, the subsequent books in the series were more imaginative explorations of how children would survive.
In 1999, her novel Looking for X was published. It follows a young girl in her day-to-day life in a poor area of Toronto and it received the Governor General's Literary Award in 2000.
One of her best known works is the 2004 book The Heaven Shop, which tells of a family of orphans in Malawi who are struggling with sudden displacement as a result of the HIV/AIDS impact. The novel was written to dispel myths about HIV/AIDS and celebrate the courage of child sufferers.
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