Lee Weatherly has written over 50 books for children and young adults, including the bestselling YA series Angel, which has sold over a third of a million copies worldwide. Awards for her work include the Sheffield Children’s Book Award, the Stockport Children’s Book Award, and the Leeds Book Award; she was also shortlisted for the Edgar Allan Poe Award. An experienced writing teacher and mentor, Lee’s taught courses for Arvon, SCBWI, and Cornerstones, and has seen many of her students go on to writing careers of their own.
Lee’s work spans all ages of children’s fiction, from picture books up through middle grade, teen and young adult. Her latest YA series, the Broken Sky trilogy, is “set in a daring and distorted echo of 1940s America”. Her older work frequently explores questions of identity and can be structurally sophisticated; she’s fascinated by non-sequential storytelling and loves playing with different timelines and points of view. In her younger work, magic in the real world often makes an appearance.
Lee has been writing professionally since 2002 and is published in 20 different languages. Passionate about helping new talent reach its full potential, she believes that so much of storytelling happens in the spaces between the words – and that good writing is more about what a writer doesn’t say than what she does.
'As well as being a very talented writer, Lee is one of the most naturally gifted teachers I have ever met. I came to think of her as an unofficial mentor over the years, whose wisdom and sharp writerly instincts have helped me again and again. I highly recommend Lee as a mentor to anyone who wants to take their writing to the next level.' — Cass Green, Sunday Times bestselling author of The Woman Next Door and In a Cottage in a Wood
'Lee’s no-nonsense, practical approach focuses on the core necessities in writing fiction. Tight plots, intense scenes and making each word work in raising the story as high as it can possibly go. She knows it all!' — Sarwat Chadda, author of the Devil’s Kiss and Ash Mistry series
'Lee mentored me as an unpublished writer and again when I was writing my second novel, Grounded, which went on to win the Children’s Books Ireland Book of the Year 2013. She is a very astute reader with a gift for identifying what is and isn’t working in a manuscript and the ability to convey that to the writer. I especially valued Lee’s gift for understanding story structure – something which is often overlooked. Lee always made me feel my work was valuable and that she really cared about helping me to make it the best it could be.' — Sheena Wilkinson, award-winning author of Taking Flight, Grounded and Street Song
