Louise Rennison

Louise Rennison (11 October 1951 – 29 February 2016) was an English author and comedian who wrote the Confessions of Georgia Nicolson series for teenage girls. The series records the exploits of a teenage girl, Georgia Nicolson, and her best friends, the Ace Gang. Her first and second novels, Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging and It's OK, I'm Wearing Really Big Knickers were portrayed in a film adaptation called Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging. She also wrote a series of books about Georgia's younger cousin, The Misadventures of Tallulah Casey. Her 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. 2Early life Rennison was brought up in Leeds, Yorkshire, in a three-bedroomed council house in Seacroft with her mum, dad, grandparents, aunt, uncle 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 and later gave up a daughter 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. While there, she was part of an all-female cabaret group called Women with Beards, a performing group that poked fun at men and why they are responsible "for all the ills of society." 2Career 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 i