Melvin Burgess has made a powerful name for himself in the world of children’s and young adult literature, emerging in the 1990s as the author of a succession of critically acclaimed novels and as a vocal advocate for his young readership. Although he began writing for younger children, he is best known for his controversial teenage fiction, most notably the Carnegie Medal and Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize winner Junk (1996), which explored adolescent encounters with heroin in 1980s Bristol. Burgess is a versatile author whose work is often distinguished by an inventive approach to genre, form and narrative, and his success is partly due to a desire to push boundaries. Burgess’s journalistic origins are reflected in …
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Citation: Waller, Alison. "Melvin Burgess". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 08 June 2011 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=12754, accessed 26 November 2024.]
