Georgia Byng

Georgia Byng grew up outside Winchester, in England, near the river Itchen, with three naughty brothers and a sister. Her dad was nature loving and her mum was very encouraging and warm. The nearby country lane with its many cottages was somewhere Georgia first found out about characters, for it was teeming with them, and she used to interview them. Otherwise she would try to sell these neighbours things she had made. As a child she loved acting and so at 18 went to The Central School of Speech and Drama in London. After college she began to paint and write. She had always written poems and songs but now she started writing stories. Her first were in comic strip, a medium that she worked with for five years. The Sock Monsters was her first published book in 1995 - a comic strip story for 5 - 7 year olds. Georgia lives in a house in London full of old and new art, as her husband is the conceptual artist Marc Quinn. Marc keeps all sorts of strange things in the fridge - once he had to keep a Canadian frog in there as it was hibernating and had to be kept cold. They and their family, Tiger (17), Lucas (6) and Sky (2) love to travel, their favorite destination being India.