Biography iain lawrence

Marie, Ontario, Canada, of parents newly arrived from England.

Iain Lawrence (born ) is a Canadian author for children and young adults.

According to his entry on the Random House Web site, the family moved frequently, and by the time he had finished high school, Lawrence had lived in eleven houses and gone to nine different schools. He describes himself as being "shy and quite friendless, but now I think I was lucky to have grown up like that. A third-grade teacher first spotted Lawrence's talent, but he would work at many jobs before finally studying journalism in British Columbia and spending ten years as a journalist.

Lawrence met his partner, Kristin Miller, at a writers's group. She is a quilter who had written a book about her craft, and her agent, Jane Jordan Browne, agreed to represent Lawrence. It was her advice, to switch from adult to young adult writing, that became the turning point in Lawrence's career. He rewrote his first novel, which she had been unable to sell in the adult market, and The Wreckers became the first of his award-winning young adult novels.

Lawrence, Iain –PERSONAL: Born February 25, , in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, .

Set in , The Wreckers is the first of a series of three. Isle of Skye , the ship of fourteen-year-old John Spencer's father, is wrecked off the coast of Cornwall, England. John survives to discover that the villagers are wreckers rather than rescuers, pirates who lure ships onto the deadly rocks that lie beneath the surface of the shallow waters.

They kill the survivors, but John escapes in search of his father, whose fate is unknown to him. In reviewing this well-received debut, Horn Book reviewer Mary M. Burns wrote: "Fast-moving, mesmerizing, this is a tale in the grand tradition of Robert Louis Stevenson and Leon Garfield. The Smugglers is set two years later, with John and his father bound for London on the Dragon , hoping to engage in the wool trade.

When the captain is murdered, his replacement and most of the crew that he brings aboard turn out to be criminals involved with smuggling. The trilogy ends with The Buccaneers , in which seventeen-year-old John survives a number of adventures to take command of the ship and safely guide it home after the captain becomes ill.