Biography
B. R. Collins was born in 1981 and lives in Kent. She studied English at Kings College, Cambridge, then trained as an actor at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art.
She was twice winner of the Young National Poetry Competition, and two of her plays have been produced, with her free adaptation of Trojan Women being performed at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
She is the author of several novels for young adults. Her first book, The Traitor Game, won the 2009 Branford Boase Award and her second, A Trick of the Dark (2009), was shortlisted for the Coventry Inspiration Prize.Tyme's End, a psychological thriller, was published in 2011.
Gamerunner (2011) and its sequel, Mazecheat (2012), are thrillers set in a future world of computer gaming. 2012 also saw the publication of her novel, The Broken Road, a historical novel based on the Children's Crusade of 1212.
Bibliography
Author statement
I write because it's a way to live other people's lives. When you're writing, you enter a new world, become someone else; and that gives you the space and the freedom to experience the extremes of passion and drama, explore all the dark, exciting things that you wouldn't want to live for real. Books can - indeed, should - touch you, shake you up, make you laugh and cry, make you feel uncomfortable: but they can't damage you. It's like being a tightrope walker with a safety net. And I write because it's a way to live my life. It's a way for me to make sense of things - when I write about other people, I understand myself better (after all, when it comes down to it, all those "other people" are also, sort of, me) but also because writing is just ... fun. There's a rush I get when the writing is going well that it's hard to beat. And sometimes, very occasionally, I look back at what I've written and I don't quite know where it's come from: and all I can say is, wow, I did that. I don't know how I did it, but I made that. And I'm proud of it. That's the best.
