Marie-Louise Jensen

Born Marie-Louise Chalcraft in Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire on September 22nd 1964. 

She attended a string of state schools, including Chiltern Edge in Oxfordshire. Once herfamily moved down to Bath in 1979, she attended Fitzmaurice and St Laurence schools in Bradford on Avon. Throughout her primary school years she was constantly told off for reading secretly and writing long stories instead of completing maths sheets. She's not sure any of her teachers ever read her stories, but she had a lot of books taken away. When she was eleven, one teacher confiscated Lord of the Rings in the middle of the Battle of Helm’s Deep, and she nearly suffered severe psychological damage waiting a week to find out if Aragorn survived. 
My A-levels were in German, French and English and she went on to study German and Danish with literature at the University of East Anglia.

She did more studying and various translating and teaching jobs, including teaching at a university in Germany for four years. Then she returned to Britain to be a full time mother and home educator. These were the years in which she overcame her education and regained her creativity. She reads lots and started writing again. 

In 2004-5, she took the MA in Writing for Young People at the Bath Spa University. She passed with distinction and was lucky enough to be taken on by an agent, Rosemary Canter at United Agents and a publisher (Oxford University Press) soon after.