Melvin Burgess

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Melvin Burgess (born 25 April 1954) is a British author of children's fiction. He became notorious in 1996 with the publication of Junk, about heroin-addicted teenagers on the streets of Bristol, in the shadow of Trainspotting: that is, only months after the movie version of the 1993 book. At least in Britain, Junk became one of the best-known young adult books of the decade. Burgess won the annual Carnegie Medal in Literature from the Library Association, recognising the year's best children's book by a British subject. For the 70th anniversary in 2007 it was named one of the top ten Medal-winning works, selected by a panel to compose the ballot for a public election of the all-time favourite.

Burgess completed his first book accepted for publication in his mid-thirties: a novel, The Cry of the Wolf, published by Andersen Press in 1990. It was highly commended by the librarians for the Carnegie Medal, which Gillian Cross won for Wolf. (Cross featured a girl and a metaphorical wolf. Burgess featured as a character the last grey wolf in Great Britain.)

Andersen published all of Burgess' books through the mid-1990s. The Baby and Fly Pie (1993) was another highly commended runner up for the Carnegie Medal, a distinction that was roughly annual. Junk won the 1996 Medal and also the annual Guardian Children's Fiction Prize judged by a panel of British children's writers, which The Guardian confers only once upon any author. Burgess is one of six authors, all 1967 to 1996, who won the Carnegie Medal for their Guardian Prize-winning books.

Kite (1997) features a boy who hatches a red kite egg.

Burgess again courted predictable controversy in 2003, with the publication of Doing It, which dealt with underage sex. In the U.S. it was adapted as a television series, Life as We Know It.

In other books such as The Ghost Behind the Wall (2000), Burgess has dealt with less realist and sometimes fantastic themes. Bloodtide (1999) and Bloodsong (2007) are post-apocalypse adaptations of Volsunga Saga.

In 2001 Burgess wrote the novelisation of the film Billy Elliot, based on Lee Hall's screenplay.

Polyphony is a narrative technique used in many of his most famous novels.

Melvin Burgess

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