Meredith Hooper 1994-95

Meredith Hooper is a leading writer of non-fiction, with some 75 titles published internationally both for the children’s market and the wider adult market. Her latest book, celebrating the centenary of Scott’s expedition to the Antarctic, is The Longest Winter – Scott’s other heroes (John Murray, hardback 2010, paperback 2011). The Ferocious Summer - Palmer's Penguins and The Warming of Antarctica (Profile Books, hb 2007, pb 2008; Greystone Books, North America, 2008) won the 2008 Nettie Palmer Prize for non-fiction at the Victorian Premier's Awards.

Meredith is a Visiting Fellow at Wolfson College, Cambridge. She is a trustee of, and on the Editorial Board of, The Round Table - The Commonwealth Journal of International Affairs. She is a UK Trustee of the International Polar Foundation and a Trustee of the UK Antarctic Heritage Trust.

Over the last fifteen years she has focused on writing and lecturing about the polar regions, in particular Antarctica: the exploration of the continent, its wildlife, and status. She has been selected to work in Antarctica as a writer in 1994, 1998-99 and 2001-02 with the Australian and then American Government's artists & writers programmes, and as a guest of the Royal Navy. In 2000 she was awarded the Antarctic Service Medal by the National Science Foundation on behalf of the US Congress.

She was born and brought up in Adelaide, South Australia. She graduated from the University of Adelaide with a First Class Honours degree in History and then completed her B. Phil. at Nuffield College, Oxford.

Meredith has published prolifically, both fiction and non-fiction, on Antarctica and beyond for younger and older readers.