Pauline Chandler
About Author
Pauline Chandler was born in Nottinghamshire. In 2003 she was awarded the Arts Council England Writers' Award. It is an award that, over the years, has been given to writers such as Salman Rushdie, Kazuo Ishiguro, Ted Hughes, Ian McEwan, A S Byatt, Carol Ann Duffy, and Jim Crace. In total, previous winners have gone on to win ten Booker Prizes and 26 Whitbread Awards.
The prize money Pauline received enabled her to fund a research trip to Lorraine, where she visited Joan of Arc's parents' house in Domremy, the remains of the castle at Vaucouleurs and the cathedral at Reims. Pauline's interest in Joan of Arc began a few years ago in the market place in Rouen, where she found herself, totally by chance, on the way home after a family holiday. As Pauline explains, the inspiration came suddenly, almost as if it was divined: 'The hotel we were booked into didn't have a restaurant and we were directed to the town square. When I realised where I was standing, on the site of Jehanne's execution, I knew I would write her story. The site is very beautiful and very simple. Although there were plenty of tourists around it seemed to swallow up noise. In all the hustle and bustle I was alone in a great bowl of silence. It was a powerful experience.'
In all it took Pauline over two years to research Joan of Arc's story and a further nine months to write her critically acclaimed novel, Warrior Girl. Much of the information was taken directly from the transcripts of Joan of Arc's Trial of Condemnation and her subsequent Trial of Rehabilitation. The rest was divine inspiration?
After her student years in sixties London, Pauline became a teacher and now teaches children with special needs. She began to write seriously during a year's break in Cornwall. Her early short stories were published in local and national magazines. Dark Thread, her first novel, was published by OUP in 1998. Pauline lives in Derbyshire with her husband - her university sweetheart. They have three sons, a doctor in California, a guitarist in an up-and-coming rock band, and a chef. Perfect for Xmas get-togethers, they can feed and serenade all the family, then fix any inevitable food poisoning problems.
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