Siobhan Dowd

Siobhan Dowd was a British activist and writer and was born on 4th February of the year 1960 in London, England and her writing genre were mainly young adults. Her parents were Irish and she spent most of her childhood in Aglish, County Waterford at the family cottage and later in Wicklow Town. In south London she attended a Catholic grammar school and then at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford University she gained a degree in Classics. Later, from Greenwich University, she cleared MA with distinction in Gender and Ethnic Studies. International PEN is a writer’s organization and Dowd joined it in the year 1984. In the organization, her work was in the Rushdie Defense Committee (USA) about finding and leading it and travelling to Guatemala and Indonesia to investigate about the writers’ condition of human tights. She stayed for seven years in New York and during this time she was named by Irish-America Magazine as among the ‘top 100 Irish-American’ and for her work in global anti-censorship as Aer Lingus. After her return to the UK, Siobhan Dowd founded the English PEN’s program for readers and writers, with Rachel Billington as a co-founder. Dowd was a Deputy Commissioner in Oxfordshire for Children’s Rights, during 2004. There she was making sure along with the local government that statutory services that are affecting the lives of children conform to UN protocols.