Jenny Downham

Jenny Downham (born 1964) is a British novelist and an ex-actress who has published four books.

The first, Before I Die, is the fictional account of the last few months of a sixteen-year-old girl who has been dying of leukaemia for four years. The book is told in the first person. As the book goes on, Tessa's thoughts are used to explore the nature of life. The book was short listed for the 2007 Guardian Children's Fiction Prize and the 2008 Lancashire Children's Book of the Year, nominated for the 2008 Carnegie Medal and the 2008 Booktrust Teenage Prize, and won the 2008 Branford Boase Award.

Downham's second novel, You Against Me, was published in December 2010. The book is a novel about family, loyalty, and the choices which we have to make.

Her third novel, Unbecoming, published in 2015, is a story of three generations of women and the uncovering of family secrets. Her fourth, Furious Thing, published in October 2019, was shortlisted in the children's book category of that year's Costa Book Awards.

In 1998, Downham played Anna, the Ralph's Wife in Basil.

Now Is Good is a 2012 film based on Downham's novel Before I Die, and stars Dakota Fanning and Jeremy Irvine.

External links

• [1] Works by or about Jenny Downham in libraries (Worldcat catalogue)
• Guardian Review
• New York Times Review
• The Times Feature
• Meet the Author Video
• Jenny Downham at Library of Congress, with 2 library catalogue records
• Jenny Downham at Fantastic Fiction