Robert Cormier was born and has always lived in Leominster, Massachusetts. He grew up there, went to school there, courted and married there, and raised four children in the house where he and his wife, Connie, still live. "I never intend to live anywhere else,"he says." There are lots of untold stories right here on Main Street."

Cormier, who was a newspaper reporter and columnist for 30 years is inspired by news events and, in some cases, by circumstances in his own life for the basis of his plots. And, he has an outstanding ability to create stories that capture human interest. "I take real people and put them in extraordinary situations," he said in an interview in SCHOOL LIBRARY JOURNAL. "I'm very much interested in intimidation. And the way people manipulate other people. And the obvious abuse of authority."

Robert Cormier began writing, he says,"in the seventh grade... I can't remember a time when I wasn't trying to get something down on paper." And it has been said of him that he was in love with his typewriter. He has won many prizes for his journalism and his novels for young adults. Included in his awards is the Margaret A. Edwards Award of the Young Adult Services Division of the American Library Association. This award is presented in recognition of those authors who provide young adults with a window through which they can view the world, and which will help them to grow and understand themselves and their role in society."I am delighted to be the recipient of this award,"he says," because it is such a clear reflection of what I've always hoped my novels could do -- show adolescents the bigness of what's out there and that happy endings are not our birthright. You have to do something to make them happen."

Cormier loves to travel and has visited almost every state in the U.S. A trip to Australia where he dipped his hand in the Indian Ocean thrilled him beyond measure. He also loves jazz, movies, and staying up late (to hear jazz and watch movies) and his true heroes are writers like Graham Greene, Thomas Wolfe, and J.D. Salinger. Cormier's books have been translated into many languages and consistently appear on the Best Books for Young Adults lists of the American Library Association, THE NEW YORK TIMES, and SCHOOL LIBRARY JOURNAL.

This information was excerpted from material provided by the publicity division of Delacorte Press.

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