Here’s what Harper Collins Publishers has to say about Jenny Valentine, author of Me, the Missing, and the Dead:
Jenny Valentine worked in a food shop for fifteen years, where she met many extraordinary people and sold more organic bread than there are words in her first book. She studied English literature at Goldsmith's College, which almost made her stop reading but not quite. Her debut novel, Me, the Missing, and the Dead, won the prestigious Guardian Children's Fiction Prize in the UK under the title Finding Violet Park. Jenny is married to a singer/songwriter and has two children. She lives in Hay on Wye, England.
When asked in an interview by The Bookbag what her inspiration for the book was, Valentine said:
Ah, well I knew a lady called Eileen when I was nineteen and she was about eighty. She was the first disgracefully behaved old lady I had ever met and I thought she was brilliant. When she died she was cremated and her ashes were left on a shelf - not a mini cab office - but somewhere very odd. The difference is I don't think Eileen minded, but Violet does.
