Laura Dockrill

Laura Dockrill channels performance poetry into energetic, imaginative books for children and teenagers. Darcy Burdock, published by Corgi Children’s in 2013, introduced a ten-year-old narrator who notices ordinary life with comic intensity and turns observation into stories. The novel became the first entry in a series and was shortlisted for the 2014 Waterstones Children’s Book Prize, establishing Dockrill’s place as a distinctive voice for younger readers. Her wider work includes poetry, picture books, middle-grade fiction, and novels for teenagers, often combining emotional candor with playful imagery. Dockrill studied at the BRIT School and has continued to work across performance and print, a background that suits Darcy’s lively first-person voice. Darcy Burdock is best understood as both a character title and the opening of a sequence, not an isolated book. Later installments extend Darcy’s family life, friendships, mistakes, and determined effort to make sense of the world through creative expression.