Katharine Anna Thompson, British-Irish author best known for children’s novels, is born in Halifax, West Yorkshire, England, on November 10, 1956. Most of her children’s fiction is fantasy but several of her books also deal with the consequences of genetic engineering.

Thompson is the youngest child of the social historians and peace activists E. P. Thompson and Dorothy Towers. She has lived in Ireland since 1981 and many of her books are set there. She trains racehorses in the UK and United States and travels extensively in India before settling in 1984 in Inagh, County Clare, in the west of Ireland with her partner Conor Minogue. They have two daughters, Cliodhna and Dearbhla. She is an accomplished fiddler with an interest in Irish traditional music, which is reflected in The New Policeman (2005).

Thompson wins two major annual awards for The New Policeman (Bodley Head, 2005), set in modern Kinvara and the Irish mythological Tír na nÓg: the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize and the Whitbread Children’s Book Award. It also wins the Dublin Airport Authority Children’s Book of the Year Award for 2005.

Thompson wins the Bisto Children’s Book of the Year Award four times, for The Beguilers (2001), The Alchemist’s Apprentice (2002), Annan Water (2004) and The New Policeman. Creature of the Night (2008) is shortlisted for the 2008 Booktrust Teenage Prize and the 2009 Carnegie Medal.

Thompson holds an MA in Irish traditional music performance from the University of Limerick.