Deborah Ellis

Deborah Ellis is an award-winning author, a feminist and a peace activist. Deborah penned the international bestseller The Breadwinner, as well as many challenging and beautiful works of fiction and non-fiction about children all over the world. Her most recent book is The Cat At The Wall, the story of a little car who sneaks into a small Palestinian house on the West Bank. The house seems empty, until the cat realizes that a little boy is hiding beneath the floorboards.

Deb has more than twenty books to her credit. She has won the Governor General’s Award, the Ruth Schwartz Award, the University of California’s Middle East Book Award, Sweden’s Peter Pan Prize, the Jane Addams Children’s Book Award, and the Vicky Metcalf Award for a Body of Work. She has received the Ontario Library Association’s President’s Award for Exceptional Achievement, and she has been named to the Order of Ontario.

Deborah is a passionate advocate for the disenfranchised. She “walks the talk,” donating most of her royalty income to worthy causes — Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan, Street Kids International, the Children in Crisis Fund of IBBY (International Board on Books for Young People) and UNICEF. She has donated more than one million dollars in royalties from her Breadwinner books alone.