The trailblazing Kevin and Sadie series of young adult novels, about teenagers who find love despite their religious differences during the Troubles in Northern Ireland, was written by Joan Lingard, who has passed away.
Who was Joan Lingard
According to a Thursday article in The Bookseller, Ms. Lingard, 90, “died away peacefully” on July 12. She was well-known to generations of youngsters in Northern Ireland as the author of The Twelfth Day of July (1970) and Across the Barricades, two books that chronicled the experiences of Belfast’s own star-crossed lovers, Catholic Kevin and Protestant Sadie (1972).
Tribute to Joan Lingard
Tribute was paid to Ms. Lingard from the Northern Irish author Jan Carson, who stated that her “Kevin and Sadie novels, an absolute mainstay of our school book boxes, were my very first experience of discovering people that sounded like me and came from the same region of the world as me. Lingard played a hugely important part in reminding so many of us Northern Irish creatives that our experiences were true, fascinating, and deserving of further investigation. Therefore, we ought to all be very thankful for the legacy she leaves behind.”
Francesca Dow, managing director of Penguin Random House Children’s, praised Ms. Lingard as “a wonderful writer who brought us some of the most important stories of her time” and referred to her Kevin and Sadie novels as “required reading” in an interview with The Bookseller.
In a 1998 interview with the Irish Post, Ms. Lingard discussed how a friend from Belfast visiting her at her Edinburgh home gave her the idea for the characters Kevin and Sadie.
More about Joan Lingard’s life
Joan Lingard was born in Scotland but relocated to Belfast when she was a little child, where she remained until she was 18, after which she moved back to Edinburgh. More than 60 books, including After Colette, Dreams of Love, and Modest Glory, were written by Joan Lingard.
She was a Scottish PEN member, and in 2009 she won the Royal Mail Prize for Scottish Children’s Literature. She was awarded an MBE in 1998 for her contributions to writing. Trouble on Cable Street, her most recent children’s book, was released in 2014. Her husband Martin, daughters Kersten, Bridget, and Jenny, five grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren are still alive.
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