Monica Hughes

Her last book was The Maze (2002). It features a female protagonist and two bullies magically placed in a maze, where they all depend on her for rescue.

The Keeper of the Isis Light won the 2000 Phoenix Award from the Children’s Literature Association as the best English-language children’s book that did not win a major award when it was originally published twenty years earlier. That is named for the mythical bird phoenix, which is reborn from its ashes, to suggest the book’s rise from obscurity.

WorldCat reports that Invitation to the Game (Toronto: HarperCollins, 1990) is her work most widely held in participating libraries, by a wide margin. It is a dystopian novel set on Earth in year 2154.

Invitation to the Game (Toronto: HarperCollins, 1990) won the Hal Clement Award as the year’s best science fiction novel for young adults.

The Isis trilogy comprises The Keeper of the Isis Light and two sequels, originally published by Hamish Hamilton of London, 1980 to 1982. Accepting the Phoenix Award for Keeper twenty years later, Hughes discussed her writing process in general and specifically for that work.

In her school years, her teachers always encouraged her to write and join essay writing competitions. Hughes attended Edinburgh University from 1942 to 1943. While in school, Hughes’ academic studies were interrupted as a result of World War II. She joined the Military service, the Women’s Royal Naval Service, from the years 1943–1946, cracking German codes. After returning from the war, Hughes went back to school to study Meteorology. She married Glen Hughes on April 22, 1957, and together they had 4 children.

Before becoming a writer, Hughes had many other careers. She was a dress designer in London England, and Bulawayo, Zimbabwe between the years 1948–1949. She was also a bank clerk in 1951, and a laboratory technician from 1952 to 1957.

Monica Hughes OC (November 3, 1925 – March 7, 2003) was an English-Canadian author of books for children and young adults, especially science fiction. She also wrote adventure and historical novels set in Canada, and the text for some children’s picture books. She may be known best for the Isis trilogy of young-adult science fiction novels (1980–1982).