About Melvin Burgess
Melvin Burgess is a British writer of children's fiction. He became famous in 1996 with the publication of Junk, about heroin-addicted teenagers on the streets of Bristol. In Britain, Junk became one of the best-known young adult books of the decade. Burgess won the annual Carnegie Medal from the Library Association, recognising the year's best children's book by a British author. For the 10th anniversary in 2007 it was named one of the top ten Medal-winning works, selected by a panel to compose the ballot for a public election of the all-time favourite. He completed his first book accepted for publication in his mid-thirties: a novel, The Cry of the Wolf, published by Andersen Press in 1990, which was highly commended by librarians for the Carnegie Medal, which Gillian Cross won for Wolf. Junk won the 1996 Carnegie Medal and. Andersen published all of Burgess' books until the mid-1990s.
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