Piers Torday

Piers Torday is a British writer of children's fiction, born in Northumberland in 1974 and educated at Eton College. He worked for years as a theatre and television producer before turning to writing, and later became a writing coach at The Novelry. He is best known for the Last Wild quartet, following a boy named Kester Jaynes through The Last Wild, The Dark Wild, The Wild Beyond, and The Wild Before, set after most of the world's animals have vanished. The Dark Wild won the 2014 Guardian Children's Fiction Prize. He followed the quartet with The Lost Magician and The Frozen Sea, and completed his father Paul Torday's unfinished novel The Death of an Owl. He has also adapted John Masefield's The Box of Delights for the stage.