Katherine Rundell

Katherine Rundell i(born 10 July 1987) s a British author of children’s books and a leading expert on the life and work of John Donne. She is, since 2008, a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. Her book Rooftoppers won the 2015 Waterstones Children's Book Prize. Her book Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne won the 2022 Baillie Gifford Prize. Her book Impossible Creatures was named Waterstones Book of the Year for 2023. Her work has also won the Costa Book Award for Children's Book, the Blue Peter Book Award, the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award, the Hans Christian Andersen Prize, and Le Prix Sorcières.

Quotes

... I think stories of transformations, of wild glories and everyday glories, of magic both real and imaginary, can act like a map. They give us a push toward hope. Real true hope isn't the promise that everything will be all right — but it's a belief that the world has so many strangenesses and possibilities that giving up would be a mistake; that we live in a universe shot through with the unexpected. There's never been a single decade in human history when we have not taken ourselves by surprise: we, the ungainly, wonky-toothed human species, have an endless potential for change. I am not an optimist, or a pessimist; I am a possibilityist. The possibilities out there for discovery, for knowledge, for transforming the world, are literally — there are spectacular ideas that we will have in the next ten years that we can't even begin to dream of now.
- "A very short note about hope by Katherine Rundell". The Book of Hopes: Words and Pictures to Comfort, Inspire and Entertain. Bloomsbury Publishing. 2020. pp. xv–xvii. (quote from pp. xv–xvi; edited by Katherine Rundell)

I come from a family of pilots. Both my grandfathers flew Spitfires in the Second World War, and my uncle can fly a plane. And, so, about five years ago, I started learning for the huge pleasure of being above the world and being given a vision of the sweep of it.
- (January 11, 2023)"Katherine Rundell on the Art of Words | Conversations with Tyler". Mercatus Center, YouTube. (quote at 19:33 of 59:12; recorded on September 2, 2022; see Tyler Cowen)

… I write about hermit crabs, because it was probably a hermit crab who ate Amelia Earhart. And I write about seals, because there was once a seal who learned to speak sentences of English in a very, very strong Boston accent.
- Vanishing Treasures w/ Katherine Rundell. Talk Nerdy (November 25, 2024). (quote at 5:27 of 57:41; interview conducted by Cara Santa Maria)

... Spending hours in libraries, reading old Latin manuscripts and the many brilliant encyclopaedias of mythical creatures: there are few things more wonderful.
as quoted by Zoe Perzo, Q&A with Katherine Rundell, Author of September/October Kids’ Indie Next List Top Pick “Impossible Creatures”. American Booksellers Association (bookweb.org) (September 4, 2024).

Rundell spent her formative years in wild spaces. At age 7, she moved to Zimbabwe, where her mother had family and her father worked as a diplomat, paying the young Rundell 50 pence for every poem she memorized (and extra if it came from the Renaissance).
- Nguyen, Sophia (September 10, 2024). "Katherine Rundell is her generation’s J.R.R. Tolkien". The Washington Post.

She is best known as the author of prizewinning children’s books (her only book for grown-ups, until now, is the slim and slyly titled “Why You Should Read Children’s Books, Even Though You Are So Old and Wise”). While she keeps one foot in the academic world as a fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, she has the other planted elsewhere, engaging in rooftop climbing and tightrope walking — as good a preparation as any for rendering Donne’s precarious life.
- James Shapiro (September 8, 2022)"review of Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne by Katherine Rundell".