Louise Rennison
English author and comedian
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ToursExplore Lably’s 3D toursHer one-woman live show Stevie Wonder Felt My Face won acclaim in the 1980s; her other shows were Bob Marley's Gardener Sold My Friend and Never Eat Anything Bigger Than Your Head.
Early life
Rennison was brought up in Leeds, Yorkshire, in a three-bedroomed council house in Seacroft with her mum, dad, grandparents, aunt, uncle (Robin) and cousin. She attended Parklands High School, an all-girls school, from the age of 11, which she later credited with inspiring her as a comedic writer. When she was 15, her family moved to Wairakei, New Zealand, where she became pregnant at 17 and had a daughter, whom she placed for adoption.
On returning to the UK, Rennison lived in a small flat in Notting Hill doing an assortment of jobs until she decided to pursue her dream of acting and enrolled in a Performing Arts course at the University of Brighton. In Brighton, she was part of Liz Aggiss and Billy Cowie's dance company, Six Divas, performing in their 1986 show, Torei en Veran Veta Arnold!. With 'Barmy' Jane Bassett, Joanna Boyce and Sarah Tompkinson she created a female cabaret group, Women with Beards, that poked fun at men and why they are responsible "for all the ills of society." Rennison and Bassett later performed as a double act, called Etheldreda.
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Career
Rennison's first major success was her one-woman autobiographical show, "Stevie Wonder Felt My Face." She went on tour performing this show, including at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and the BBC later produced a one-off special of it. She began to write for Woman's Hour on Radio Four, for comedians, and for a London newspaper. Her newspaper column was written about whatever personally interested her, such as how pointless it is to date over 35, and led to an invitation from Picadilly Press to write a teenage diary book. They said her writing was "so self-obsessed and so childish" that she would be perfect to write such a book.
Rennison's first novel, Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging, was published in 1999 and became a worldwide bestseller, translated into 34 languages. Being her first novel, she used real names of people from her childhood as she wrote and forgot to change the names before the book was published. As a result, childhood friends were able to recognise themselves in the stories.
Rennison said that she wrote not in an attempt to teach, but to make herself laugh. She said, "I wanted Georgia to be a decent person. I wanted her to be someone who is a bit stupid and self-obsessed and difficult and funny and rude, and a bit jealous and all those other things. But I wanted her to have a good heart." Rennison also said that her books were not just for teenage girls, but aimed to have a "potential resonance beyond the young." In particular, Rennison often brought feminist ideals into her writing. She wanted her books to get girls talking and deciding for themselves what they wanted to do and who they wanted to be, rather than letting men decide for them.
Rennison wrote a number of sequels to Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging, and in 2010 began a second series based on Georgia's cousin, The Misadventures of Tallulah Casey.
Her death was announced on 29 February 2016 by her publisher HarperCollins.
Recognition
Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging won the Nestlé Smarties Book Prize Bronze Award in 1999, and was named a Printz Honor Book in 2001.
In 2004, the fourth book in the series, Dancing in my Nuddy-Pants topped The New York Times Best Seller list. In 2008, she was named "Queen of Teen". Rennison was also rewarded with the Roald Dahl Funny Prize in 2010 for the first book in The Misadventures of Tallulah Casey series, Withering Tights.
In 2008, her "Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging" was adapted into a movie by Gurinder Chadha. In the same year, she was a recipient of the Queen of Teen award.
Despite the positive reception of her novels, Rennison faced interrogation from teachers and parents about her content. Often when she visited schools she was well received by the students, but the staff complained to her about the topics she discussed in her novels. Rennison rarely apologised for her writing. She sought out 14-year-old girls to talk with them about what they would want to read and wrote that. Her response to these teachers was, "Surely they know what to expect, they know [my books are] all about boys and snogging and all those experiences. What else am I going to talk about?"