Children and young adult novelist Geraldine McCaughrean was born in Enfield, England and educated at Christ Church College, Canterbury. She worked as a secretary at Thames Television and later worked for a London publishing house. Her writing career includes the retelling of such classics as One Thousand and One Arabian Nights, The Canterbury Tales and The Bronze Cauldron: Myths and Legends of the World, which is a collection of stories from all over the world. McCaughrean has won the Whitebread Award for A Little Lower Than the Angels, the Guardian Prize and Carnegie Medal for A Pack of Lies, and the Beefeater Childrens Novel Award for Gold Dawn.