Author

About Patrick Ness

 

Patrick Ness was born in 1971 at Fort Belvoir, an army base in Virginia where his father worked as a drill sergeant. As a baby, he lived in Hawaii until he was six, and after that he lived in Washington State for ten years. Patrick Ness attended the University of Southern California where he studied English Literature.

After graduating, Patrick got a job as a corporate writer for a cable company where he wrote anything from manuals, to speeches, to apology letters for disgruntled cable customers.

He published his first story in an LGBT magazine called Genre in 1997, and he started writing his first novel when he moved to London in 1999. In London, Patrick Ness taught creative writing at Oxford University and wrote reviews for various newspapers, including The Daily Telegraph and The Guardian, which he still works for today.

In May of 2008, Patrick Ness published his first young adult novel, The Knife of Never Letting Go, the first of the Chaos Walking trilogy. The book was an immediate success, winning the  Booktrust Teenage Prize, the Guardian Award, and was short-listed for the Carnegie Medal. The second and third books in the trilogy, The Ask and the Answer and Monsters of Men were published in 2009 and 2010 respectively. Both these books were met with similar warm reception.

When asked where his inspiration for the Chaos Walking trilogy came from, Patrick Ness said:

It was two ideas really, as I like to say, one serious, one stupid. The serious one was that the world is a noisy place already, with mobiles and the internet and networking sites and on and on. You can’t really turn anywhere without someone telling you their opinion. So I thought the next logical step was, what if you couldn’t get away? What if you and everyone else was completely robbed of privacy? Especially if you were a young person.

The other idea was that I’ve never liked books about talking dogs, and I thought it would be funny to have a dog character talk like an actual dog would, instead of just being a miniature person. And I think dogs would talk about things important to a dog, like eating and going to the bathroom and how excited they were to see you.

That’s how it began, and it just grew from there.

Patrick Ness has dual-citizenship in America and Britain, and currently lives and works in London. He is an avid runner, having completed a number of marathons, and he strives to write at least 1,000 words every day.

Young Adult Novels by Patrick Ness

Chaos Walking Trilogy

The Knife of Never Letting Go

Todd Hewitt is the only boy in a town of men. Ever since the settlers where infected with the Noise germ, Todd can hear everything the men think, and they hear everything he thinks. Todd is just a month away from becoming a man, but in the midst of the cacophony, he knows that the town is hiding something from him—something so awful Todd is forced to flee with only his dog, whose simple, loyal voice he hears too. With hostile men from the town in pursuit, the two stumble upon a strange and eerily silent creature: a girl. Who is she? Why wasn’t she killed by the germ like all the females on New World? Propelled by Todd’s gritty narration, readers are in for a white-knuckle journey in which a boy on the cusp of manhood must unlearn everything he knows in order to figure out who he truly is.

The Ask and the Answer

Reaching the end of their flight in THE KNIFE OF NEVER LETTING GO, Todd and Viola did not find healing and hope in Haven. They found instead their worst enemy, Mayor Prentiss, waiting to welcome them to New Prentisstown. There they are forced into separate lives: Todd to prison, and Viola to a house of healing where her wounds are treated. Soon Viola is swept into the ruthless activities of the Answer, while Todd faces impossible choices when forced to join the mayor’s oppressive new regime. In alternating narratives the two struggle to reconcile their own dubious actions with their deepest beliefs. Torn by confusion and compromise, suspicion and betrayal, can their trust in each other possibly survive?

Monsters of Men
As a world-ending war surges around them, Todd and Viola face monstrous decisions. The indigenous Spackle, thinking and acting as one, have mobilized their murdered people. Ruthless human leaders prepare to defend their factions at all costs, even as a convoy of new settlers approaches. And as the ceaseless Noise lays all thoughts bare, the projected will of the few threatens to overwhelm the desperate desire of the many. The consequences of each action, each word, are unspeakably vast: To Follow a tyrant or a terrorist? To save the life of the one you love most, or thousands of strangers? To believe in redemption, or assume it is lost? Becoming adults amid the turmoil, Todd and Viola question all they have known, racing through horror and outrage toward a shocking finale.

Other Works


A Monster Calls
At seven minutes past midnight, thirteen-year-old Conor wakes to find a monster outside his bedroom window. But it isn't the monster Conor's been expecting--he's been expecting the one from his nightmare, the nightmare he's had nearly every night since his mother started her treatments. The monster in his backyard is different. It's ancient. And wild. And it wants something from Conor. Something terrible and dangerous. It wants the truth. From the final idea of award-winning author Siobham Dowd--whose premature death from cancer prevented her from writing it herself--Patrick Ness has spun a haunting and darkly funny novel of mischief, loss and monsters both real and imagined.

The New World
In this dramatic short story -- a prequel to the award-winning Chaos Walking Trilogy -- author Patrick Ness gives us the story of Viola's journey to the New World. Whether you're new to Chaos Walking or an established fan, this prequel serves as a fascinating introduction to the series that Publishers Weekly called "one of the most important works of young adult science fiction in recent years."