Award-winning author Nicky Singer dies aged 66

Award-winning novelist, playwright and children’s author Nicky Singer died on 17th June 2023 aged 66 from the effects of a stroke.

She is “deeply mourned by her husband James King-Smith; her sons Roland, Edmund and Xavier Singer-Kingsmith; her brother Colin and sisters Jane, Ros and Jackie; and her many friends and family members, creative colleagues and readers across the world”, her eldest son Roland said in a statement.

Singer’s first children’s novel Feather Boy (HarperCollins Children’s Books) won the Blue Peter Book of the Year Award, and a later TV adaptation of the same name won a BAFTA for Best Children’s Drama. Feather Boy was then commissioned by the National Theatre’s Shell Connections series as a musical with lyrics by Don Black and music by Debbie Wiseman.

In 2010, Singer was asked by Glyndebourne to adapt her novel Knight Crew, a re-telling of the King Arthur legend set in contemporary gangland, for an opera with music by Julian Philips. The year 2012 saw both the publication of The Flask, and the premiere of her play “Island”, about ice-bears and the nature of reality, at the National Theatre. Island was also published as a novel by Caboodle Books in 2015 with illustrations by former UK Children’s Laureate Chris Riddell. Singer also authored The Survival Game, which was published in 2018 by Hodder Children’s Books.

Of the latter book, Singer’s eldest son Roland described “a vertiginous bidding war for The Survival Game, a powerful adventure about children facing the consequences of climate change. Offered eye-watering sums for the book and film rights – on condition that she changed the ending — Nicky stuck to her guns and in 2018 The Survival Game was published without amendments and on a smaller scale, but to enthusiastic reviews.”

He told The Bookseller: “Always energised and inspired by conversations with young people, Nicky maintained an active correspondence with her many loyal fans and toured the world with Authors Abroad to speak in schools in North America, the Middle East, Africa and the Far East. Children and young readers continued to appreciate her warm wit and her willingness to confront difficult truths and defend vulnerable people and a vulnerable planet. At the time of her death from a catastrophic brain haemorrhage she was writing a book about a world in a coma, an irony that she would certainly have appreciated.”

Singer’s agent, Clare Conville, said: "Nicky was a writer of rare imagination and force. From Feather Boy to The Innocent’s Story through to The Survival Game, her fierce intelligence and passionate commitment to give her readers brilliantly well-told stories that tackled challenging themes with humour and insight was her creative purpose. She never underestimated her audience and constantly sought new ways through different mediums whether it was Knight Crew at Glyndebourne Opera House or Island at the National Theatre to enlighten and enliven the lives of children and teenagers. Nicky will be sorely missed not just by her family, but by the community of writers she connected with and the many friends who adored her so much”.