Rosoff was born in
Boston, Massachusetts, in 1956, into a Jewish family,[3] the second of four sisters.[4] She attended
Harvard University from 1974-1977, then moved to London and studied sculpture at
Saint Martin's School of Art.[5] She returned to the
United States to finish her degree in 1980, and later moved to
New York City for 9 years, where she worked in publishing and advertising.
Career
In 1989, at the age of 32[4] Rosoff returned to
London and has lived there ever since. Between 1989 and 2003, she worked for a variety of advertising agencies as a copywriter. She began to write novels after her youngest sister died of
breast cancer. Her
young-adult novelHow I Live Now was published in 2004, in the same week she was diagnosed with breast cancer.[4] It won the annual
Guardian Children's Fiction Prize,[6][7] and the annual
Michael L. Printz Award from the
American Library Association, recognising the year's "best book written for teens, based entirely on its literary merit".[8] In 2005 she published a children's book, Meet Wild Boars, which was illustrated by
Sophie Blackall. Just in Case, published in 2006, won the British
Carnegie Medal[2] and German
Jugendliteraturpreis. What I Was, Rosoff's third novel, was published in August 2007, followed by two more collaborations with Blackall: Wild Boars Cook and Jumpy Jack and Googily. Another novel, The Bride's Farewell, was named one of 2009's ten best books for young adults that were published in the American adult market.
There Is No Dog, published by Penguin in 2011 (US edition, Putnam, 2012) is a comic novel supposing that God is a 19-year-old boy. Rosoff told Book Nerd, "The title comes from a joke about a dyslexic atheist walking up and down in front of a church with a sign that reads THERE IS NO DOG."
^Macdonald, Kevin (4 October 2013),
How I Live Now (Action, Adventure, Drama), Saoirse Ronan, Tom Holland, George MacKay, Film4, BFI Film Fund, Protagonist Pictures, retrieved 14 August 2023
^
abPress DeskArchived 9 January 2016 at the
Wayback Machine (directory). CILIP. Retrieved 7 August 2012. Quote: "media releases relating to the CILIP Carnegie and Kate Greenaway Children's Book Awards in date order." (2002 to 2006 releases concern 2001 to 2005 awards.)