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JO UNWIN
Jo
Unwin is a Literary Agent at the prestigious Conville and Walsh
Literary Agency, representing children’s authors such as
David Bedford and Philip Caveney, as well as comic
writers for adults (Charlie Brooker, Vic Reeves, Steven
Appleby).
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She
was born in
Tokyo and attended schools in
London, New York and Germany before gaining a degree in
English at
Cambridge
University.
She started her career as an actress, but was at the
same time always a writer, and was soon writing
award-winning children’s television programmes (Byker
Grove, My Parents are Aliens). Meanwhile she
also became well-known as a voice-over artist and worked
on hundreds of TV advertising campaigns and
documentaries.
Alongside this, Jo was running poetry and song-writing
workshops in inner-city primary schools and at
Great
Ormond
Street
Hospital. One such workshop culminated in a live
collaboration between children living with Aids in a
hospice in South Africa and Jarvis Cocker and an
eight-piece salsa band! |
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In
2001/2 Jo trained at The New Learning Centre and The
Parent Practice to work with children with emotional and
behavioural difficulties and their parents, working
one-to-one and running courses to help them achieve
calmer, easier and happier family life.
But
she was increasingly drawn to books. So much so that at
the age of 40, she gave up her successful career to
work, unpaid, in a children’s bookshop in order to
research a massive career change. At Tales on Moon Lane
she watched what flew off the shelves, what children
wanted, and what their parents wanted them to want
(often quite different!).
Within a few months she was appointed Literary
Consultant for Aardman Feature Films, and still scouts
for them, looking for books that could lend themselves
to animation treatment. This job enabled her to meet
agents and publishers from all over the world, and she
joined Conville and Walsh as their Children’s Agent in
2008 – with a mission to find writers who write books
that children genuinely want to read.
Jo
lives in Brixton in
London
with her husband and two sons who have very different
taste in books, and are therefore excellent guinea-pigs!
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