Jackie Morris
Jackie Morris
Jackie Morris was born in Birmingham but grew up in Evesham, where her parents moved when she was four.
From “at least the age of six” she wanted to be an artist; having watched her dad drawing a picture of a lapwing, making a bird appear on a piece of paper using only a pencil, and she thought it was some magic that made this happen. So there and then she decided to learn how to conjure birds from paper and colour.
She went to Prince Henry’s High School in Evesham. Having throughout school been told off for drawing and dreaming, Jackie now gets paid to do both.
After school she went to college, first in Hereford, then to Exeter where she was told that she would never make it as an illustrator. From there she ‘escaped’ to Bath Academy, which is set in a beautiful stately home in Corsham. It was there that she developed a love for peacocks because these bright birds with their ridiculous tails would fly into the gardens.
After college Jackie lived briefly in London, just off Balham High Road. She thought you had to live in London because that is where most of the publishing houses are. (It didn’t take her long to realize that she was not born to live in a city). She says it was here that her ‘real’ education began, as she took her portfolio around magazine publishers and book publishers. She worked in magazines and books for seven years, for example The New Statesman, New Socialist, Independent, Guardian and Radio Times. She also designed cards and calendars for Greenpeace and Amnesty International and fell into children’s books by accident.
Jackie moved to Wales just before starting her first children’s book, Jo’s Storm by Caroline Pitcher, and has lived in the same place ever since – a small cottage held together by spider’s webs where cats come and go. At the moment she shares the house with Tom and Hannah, her son and daughter, Floss and Bella, two odd dogs, and Maurice, Pixie, Elmo, Martha and Max, cats of various colour but mostly ginger.