Mark Haddon

Mark Haddon is a contemporary English novelist that is also known for his abstract painting, illustration and poetry writing. His best-known contemporary novel was “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time,” a young adult novel. Haddon was born in Northampton, England in 1962 to a father that was an architect. He went to the Uppingham School for his early childhood education and then Merton, College, Oxford for his higher education, where he majored in English Literature. Upon graduation from college, he moved to Scotland and got a job taking care of disabled persons. For the most part, he worked with patients suffering from autism and multiple sclerosis and this would significantly influence his later writing. In addition to taking care of patients, he also worked several jobs that included illustrator and cartoonist, at the mailing office and the theater box office. He got his fiction works features in a carton strip and several periodicals during this time. Haddon subsequently moved to Boston with his wife but only stayed for a year before moving back to England, where he got into abstract painting. Soon afterward, he began penning children’s fiction though he had for a time written for popular television shows and children’s books. He made his literary debut with the 1987 published title “Gilbert’s Gobstopper” which was followed by several others that he illustrated himself.