Personal Profile Cornelia Funke

      The German author, Cornelia Funke was born 1958 in Dorsten, in the German region of Westphalia. As a child, she wanted to become an astronaut and/or a pilot, but then decided to study pedagogy at the University of Hamburg. After finishing her studies, Funke worked for three years as a social worker. During her social work she focused on working with children who came from deprived backgrounds.

      Following university, she worked for three years as a social worker in an educational project, working with children from difficult backgrounds. Following a post-graduate course in book illustration at the Hamburg State College of Design, she worked as a designer of board games and as an illustrator of children's books. Disappointment in the way some of the stories were told, combined with her desire to draw fabulous creatures and magical worlds, rather than familiar situations of school and home, she was inspired to write her own stories for young readers.

      During the late 1980s and the 1990s, Funke established herself in Germany with two children's series, namely the fantasy-oriented Gespensterjäger (Ghosthunters) and the Wilde Hühner (Wild Chicks) line of books. Funke has been called "the J. K. Rowling" of Germany; although she was highly successful in Germany, the first of her books to be translated into English was Herr der Diebe in 2002.[9] It was subsequently released as The Thief Lord by Scholastic and made it to the number 2 spot on The New York Times Best Seller list. The fantasy novel Dragon Rider (2004) stayed on the New York Times Best Seller list for 78 weeks. Following the success of The Thief Lord and Dragon Rider, her next novel was Inkheart(2003), which won the 2004 BookSense Book of the Year Children's Literature award. Inkheart was the first part of a trilogy which was continued with Inkspell (2005), which won Funke her second BookSense Book of the Year Children's Literature award (2006). The trilogy was concluded in Inkdeath (published in Germany in 2007, English version Spring 2008, American version Fall 2008).

           Funke also worked as a producer on the film adaptation of Inkheart.

          On her personal homepage, Funke states that the vital starting point for a good book is an "idea", and if that idea is worth it, to research on interesting topics which support the idea, and to search for appropriate places and characters. She said of ideas that "they come from everywhere and nowhere, from outside and inside. I have so many, I won't be able to write them down in one lifetime." The characters, Cornelia Funke elaborates, "Mostly they step into my writing room and are so much alive, that I ask myself, where did they come from. Of course, some of them are the result of hard thinking, adding characteristics, manners, etc., but others are alive from the first moment they appear", and pointed out that Dustfinger from "Inkheart" was one of the most vivid characters who ever popped into her mind. For aspiring authors, Funke says: "Read – and be curious. And if somebody says to you: 'Things are this way. You can't change it' - don't believe a word."

        As a reader, Cornelia has always loved good fantasy, particularly British fantasy authors such as J. R. R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, C. S. Lewis Chronicles of Narnia, and J. M Barrie's Peter Pan. Cornelia Funke's own success is now international, demonstrating the universal appeal – and power – of her storytelling.

       Cornelia Funke researches for each novel meticulously. For example, before writing Inkheart, she researched about booksellers, book collectors, book thieves and even book murderers as well as reading about martens and fire eaters. She then imagined the characters and the places they might go, writes down plot lines for the first 20 chapters. Then, and only then - after about six months – she writes the first sentence. A major novel will take her about a year to write. She always does her own sketches – in pen and ink (her grandfather was a famous etcher), she creates a picture of her own characters to help her write about them.

             She married printer Rolf Funke in 1981. They have two children, Anna (b. 1989) and Ben (b. 1994). Up until 2005 the Funke family lived in Hamburg, Germany, when they moved to Los Angeles. Sadly, in March 2006, Rolf died of cancer.

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