Mimi Thebo is a Carnegie medal multi-nominated children’s author, who has also published literary fiction for adults. Her work has been translated into twelve languages, adapted into a BAFTA award-winning film, read on BBC Radio Four and signed for deaf children by ITV. Her favourite description of her work comes from BookTrust, who said that it ‘movingly explores the interconnectedness of our minds, bodies, spirituality and physical environment…’ In the academy, she is interested in the ethics of representation, particularly writing as another kind of person or another species.
Her recent books are about recovering from trauma and they are linked to the natural world. Mimi travels to schools and festivals with life-sized cardboard grizzly bears and coyotes and has claws to handle. She is a passionate advocate of reading and writing and loves to talk to young teens/tweens about how their reading can improve their life… Schools call her ‘inspiring’ and ‘brilliant’ and she often goes back to talk to generations of Key Stage 3 students… Mimi is funny and forthright and really enjoys being with young people – she’s told this shows!
As a university lecturer in Creative Writing for nearly 20 years, Mimi has nurtured writing talent in literally thousands of people and some of her graduates have gone onto successful writing careers – and even become best-sellers and award-winning authors. She is also a Royal Literary Fellow and has led (again thousands) of successful workshops in schools, museums, libraries, art galleries, prisons, nursing homes, churches… even outdoors in her portable wilderness writing shelter!
Mimi’s writing, teaching and speaking all come from the same place of her deep commitment to the craft of writing and her endless curiosity about how we all experience the world and each other.

Recent Publications
  • Dreaming the Bear - Oxford University Press, 2016
  • Coyote Summer - Oxford University Press, 2017
  • Hospital High - Lodestone Press, 2017
Awards and residencies
  • Hawthornden Residency - September, to write first draft of a novel, 2019
  • Carnegie Medal Nomination - Coyote Summer, 2018
  • Carnegie Medal Longlist - Dreaming the Bear, 2017
  • UKLA Longlist - Dreaming the Bear, 2017
  • Centurion Shortlist - Dreaming the Bear, 2017