2 June at 5.30pm
Reading from her work, family event

3 June at 2.30pm
With other writers, discussing their favourite children's classic

3 June at 4pm
The Federation Party – see Hay programme for details

Antony Beevor »
Louis de Bernières »
Bob Geldof »
Germaine Greer »
Doris Lessing »
Ken Loach »
Ian McEwan »
Orhan Pamuk »
Tony Parsons»
Zadie Smith »
John Updike »
Arnold Wesker »
Jacqueline Wilson »
Benjamin Zephaniah »

Without hype, Wilson has built a huge audience among young girls and is now the most borrowed author in British libraries. Born in 1945, she started writing stories as a child, and got her first job at publishers D C Thomson, where they named the teen magazine, Jackie, after her.

Wilson was first published as an author of novels for adults, but started writing for children in the 1980s. Her first big success was The Story of Tracy Beaker, about an irrepressible girl in care. Since then she has written a string of bestsellers, all narrated by their young protagonists and dealing with modern life in all its messiness – from school projects to foster homes, from tattooed bipolar Mums to sleepovers. She has won many major prizes and regularly fills halls and festival tents with her young readers.

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Jacqueline Wilson