Paul Dowswell

Paul Dowswell writes award-winning historical fiction for young adults. He is best known for his Bloomsbury novel Auslander, which won the 2019 Trinity Schools Book Award and the 2011 Hamelin Associazione Culturale Book Prize and been shortlisted for 19 other UK and international book awards since 2009.

His Eleven Eleven won the 2013 Historical Association Young Quills Award and Sektion 20 won the 2012 Historical Association Young Quills Award. His Bloomsbury novels The Cabinet of Curiosities (2011), Red Shadow (2014), Bomber (2016) and his Barrington Stoke novel Wave (2017) have also been shortlisted for the Historical Association Young Quills Award. His 2005 novel Powder Monkey was shortlisted for the 2006 Trinity Schools Book Award. His non-fiction books have won or been shortlisted for the Blue Peter Book Award (twice), the Rhône-Poulenc Junior Prize for Science Books, and the TES Information Book Award. His Wolf Children was hailed as the 'best post-war children's novel since The Silver Sword by Amanda Craig. Dutch publishers Callenbach published his 14th novel, Out of Nowhere in 2021.

His books are sold throughout the English-speaking world and have been published in an additional ten languages. Although most are aimed at teenage readers, they have wide appeal and have been published abroad for the adult market. Most of his novels are set in the 20th Century and are primarily concerned with the First or Second World War, and life under totalitarian regimes. Paul Dowswell is also a prolific writer of non-fiction with over seventy titles to his name.

He is a regular visitor to schools all around the UK and Europe and has also been invited to Australia and South Africa to talk about his books and teach creative writing.

He is a Visiting Professor at Manchester Metropolitan University and has recently worked for the Royal Literary Fund as a visiting fellow at Sheffield University and Leicester De Montfort.

His acclaimed first adult non-fiction, Aliens - The Chequered History of Britain's Wartime Refugees, 1933 - 1950, was published by Biteback in 2023.