Berlie Doherty was born in Knotty Ash, Liverpool, on 6 November 1943. Educated at Upton Hall Convent School, she read English at the University of Durham, graduating. After university Berlie worked as a social worker, a teacher and a schools broadcaster for BBC Radio, before becoming a full-time writer. She has travelled extensively in America, Australia, Europe, Asia and the Middle East speaking at conferences and literature festivals as well as in schools and universities.

Berlie has won the prestigious Carnegie Medal twice, first for Granny was a Buffer Girl in 1986, and again in 1991 for Dear Nobody, which dealt with the subject of teenage pregnancy.

Berlie's latest novel, Abela deals with AIDS in Afrcia, illegal immigration, adoption and social acceptance.

Synopsis: "Be strong, my Abela." These are the last words of Abela's mother in their HIV/Aids stricken African village, where it seems that to live or to die, to be sick or to be healthy, is just a matter of chance. It takes all Abela's strength to survive her Uncle Thomas' scheming to get to Europe, but what will be her fate as an illegal immigrant? "I don't want a sister or brother," thinks Rosa in England, when her mother tells her that she wants to adopt a child. Could these two girls ever become sisters? Is there room in Rosa's family for an African orphan haunted by lions? Is there room in their hearts?

Berlie talked to Write Away readers in a live forum on 27th March. The following is a transcript of the session reordered for reading ease.

Victoria Rothwell What inspired you to write Abela?

Berlie Doherty The inspiration for Abela came when I visited Tanzania and befriended many people in the village. I was visiting a friend who was doing VSO work - years later she was still in Tanzania working with AIDS victims and their families. I kept thinking about the people I'd met, and wondering how their lives had been affected

Marie-Louise Jensen I'm very interested in how you approach researching a subject like this? Do you do it all long distance or do you travel to your locations? Do you talk to people who have had similar experiences as Abela?

Berlie Doherty It's a bit of both or all. I think a lot, read a lot, talk a lot. In the case of Abela I talked to a child who was being adopted. I talked to adoptive parents, Aids workers, asylum seekers' workers, etc, and everything they told me helped to put a picture together. But in the end, you have to remember that you're writing a story, a work of fiction, not a documentary.

Marie-Lousie Jensen Your research/background experiences sound very thorough, and I think that's important. But it's also very true that at some point the story and imagination needs to take over.

Nikki Gamble So after having the initial idea, how did you find the story?

Berlie Doherty: I think my main influence here was following an adoption through (in fact it was never completed), but I moved from being very interested in the child who was being adopted to being interested in the things that happened in the adoptive family. It's a huge, generous and difficult thing to do, and I really wanted to show that nothing was easy for anyone. Incidentally, a long time ago I worked in adoptions, and have written another novel on the subject.

Victoria Rothwell What made you decide to have the viewpoints of two children in the narrative, rather than just Abela's?

Berlie Doherty: A lot of people seem interested in the two-voice aspect of Abela. I think Rosa's story is just as important as Abela's but in a less obvious way - her own emotional journey is quite a difficult one and I felt it would help and interest children, whether or not they've been in a situation like hers.

Bridget Carrington It seems to me that the use of dual or multiple narratives is a crucial feature of Berlie's writing - look at Dear Nobody and Granny Was a Buffer Girl. In what are quite short novels, it allows for a focussed widening of the viewpoints put forward. We can see the same events from a number of different perspectives, something which deepens and widens the treatment of the book's main subject/s. In real life we need to be able to appreciate other's opinions and viewpoints, so I see Berlie's use of multiple narratives as a very clever way of achieving this, and of widening the audience for her books. Dear Nobody deals with a subject that most teenage boys would not consider as pertinent to them, yet Chris's narrative shows that it most certainly is... But am I right Berlie?

Berlie Doherty I do love to take on the persona of two or more characters - it isn't really much harder to write in say, two voices and get inside each character, than it is to write in the third person and be true to the feelings and actions of more than one character, if you see what I mean. A writer is like an actor as well as like a photographer.

Yes, Bridget you are, and thank you. I do try to identify with every character I create, and a way of helping myself to do this is to make the character a narrator. Sometimes, as in Street Child, I then retreat and rewrite the whole thing in the third person, but I've done what I needed to do and entered the character's body and mind. If it helps me, maybe it helps the reader too!

 Nikki Gamble That's very interesting. Voice seems to be so important for telling the story that you want to and I've heard many writers say that sometimes when things aren't working all that's needed is a change of voice. Something as simple as a shift from first to third person, or vice versa, can reveal how the story needs to be told.

Berlie Doherty You can also have a lot of fun with a personal voice, introducing a kind of spoken, realistic language that just wouldn't work in a third person narrative, and you can reveal inner thoughts and secrets between the reader and the narrator.

Darren Coult: I agree with Bridget that the use of multiple narrative viewpoints is key to the power of Abela.

 My question follows on from that. Nearer the end of the novel, I noticed that the 3rd person narrative of events dominated and that we stopped hearing Abela's own voice. Was this a deliberate move and if so for what reason? I guess I'm wondering if it reflected the fact that events and decisions had increasingly moved beyond Abela's ability to influence them.

Berlie Doherty: Thanks Darren. I've just checked the pages - Abela's personal voice slips off page 209, and the novel finishes on 235. I wanted to show, yes, that all the things that had brought Abela to this point had come together, and I needed to retreat from being inside her skin to seeing her as a little girl who was at last being absorbed and cared for.

Theano Manoli 'Abela' is a story which encompasses important social issues such as the Aids, adoption, immigrant children. Was it written to make Children think about these issues? Do you feel children should touch on social questions at an early stage?

Berlie Doherty: Yes, Abela does contain some serious topics, and I don't think authors should shy away from writing about such things for young readers. In my head, I think the ideal reader for Abela is over 13, but I know younger readers will find it and they will have some tough things to think about. But last week my 3-year-old grandson asked 'why are some people already dead?' you have to be prepared to answer questions like this all the time. We do live in a tough world and all children know about Aids, but don't perhaps know enough about it to understand. Literature helps, I think, to resolve some of the painful questions.

Mathew Tobin My reading group of Year 5/6 children are about to get together to discuss 'Broken Glass' by Sally Grindley. It tells a tale of two boys in India who depart from their parents and struggle to survive (picking up broken glass to earn money). It is a book that allows children a glimpse at a people they may not know anything about. However, through their encounters with fiction, you know they will take on board an understanding of the problems and lives that exist outside our own. Do you think it is important for children to gain an understanding of the world around them, even if it is sad and upsetting? Is this a difficult subject to manage?

P.S. I'll definitely also be reading Abela in our group. After Broken Glass it seems like an excellent step!

Berlie Doherty: Broken Glass sounds great, and a wonderful way of making another world vivid and understandable to children. Yes, I do think we can open up our children's minds by introducing them to such topics - they hear the news, they catch glimpses of other cultures, but it's by entering these places/lives/cultures through fiction that children really begin to understand in an empathetic way. Thrilled to hear you'll be introducing Abela!

Nikki Gamble: I wanted to ask you the question about insider/outsider perspectives. That is whether writing about the issues faced by another culture has advantages in that you can make a bridge to help children understand those issues... but also whether writing from the outside requires a certain responsibility on the part of the writer. I'd be very interested to know whether this is something that you consciously consider when you write about for instance, Africa... or whether you have a view on this issue?

Berlie Doherty: Outsider-insider - this is a really difficult one, Nikki. When I came back from my visit to Tanzania I was so full of really vivid impressions of the people, colours, life-style, animals, food, smells, sounds, everything of Tanzania, and I wanted to write a novel about it then and couldn't even start - I felt it would be intrusive. It wasn't until years later when I felt I wanted to write about Aids that this resolved itself - Aids is a world issue, so is adoption, so is asylum seeking. I had my story, and then I felt able to choose me setting, and so I was able to write about Tanzania. I don't think as a middle-class white person in leafy Derbyshire I would have the right or the knowledge to have written about another culture in another other way.

Darren Coult: When I reviewed Abela I was intrigued by your choice of metaphor: For example, Abela’s grief-ridden sob “jerked out of me like a black fox … leaping out of its long hiding place” (p. 27), whilst her dead father’s memory “slid in and out of her memory, like a fish drifting in and out of shadowed water.” (p. 226) I wondered what went into choosing these metaphors and whether you think the natural world is a good source of imagery about human emotions?

Berlie Doherty: I don't really think about metaphor - it just seems to happen. I really want people to understand what I'm trying to say, and I think that's how it comes in! But metaphor has to be appropriate to the time and place and voice of the book, so sometimes I do go back and edit in or out

David Reedy: I loved Abela and have been recommending it today to a group of primary school teachers I was working with. We were looking at how such a book might become the focus of a sequence of reading sessions for 10 to 11 year olds. How do you feel about your books being a focus for pupils and teachers in literacy lessons?

Berlie Doherty: Thank you for recommending it David! I love the idea of the novel being read by children and teachers together, if this is what you mean. I do think there are a lot of things to discuss and think about in Abela, particularly if it is to be read by primary school children.

Nikki Gamble: So did you have a particular reader in mind when you wrote Abela?

Berlie Doherty: I don't think I did have a particular reader in mind. I've mentioned the 13-year old, so I suppose that's the closest, but it doesn’t always work that way of course. Writers say they write for themselves, and I think that's still true for me.

David Reedy: Are you ever tempted to write sequels? It seems to me (as someone who doesn't write fiction) that as soon as I'd finished I would be beset by questions which could form the beginnings of later events in the lives of the characters _ did Abela ever go back to Tanzania when she was older? Was it really a happy ending or just the beginning of a new sequence of difficulties to endure for both? (and so on!)

Berlie Doherty: I resist sequels because when I read them I'm usually disappointed. I think as a reader you get to know the characters in a particular way, stemming perhaps from your own life experience, and so nothing that the writer does is going to be quite right. I often get asked if I will write a sequel for Dear Nobody and for Abela, but so far I've managed to say no! But that doesn't mean to say that I leave the characters behind. They stay in my head and my dreams and I do worry about them!

Bridget Carrington: Is there a correlation between the subjects you chose and the length of the novels? I feel that often more can be said in a shorter novel than in a longer one, where it may become buried or confused.

Berlie Doherty: yes I seem to still write short novels, though I'm getting a few more words in than I used to. I look back on books like Granny was a Buffer Girl and Jeannie of White Peak Farm and I think you rarely find novels of that length for the 12+ readers now. But a long novel is still daunting to some readers, and I think the current fashion for long novels may be a shame for those who look for a short read. A short novel can be very intense, like a short story, very gripping and very satisfying, and I think the long rambling novel, as you say, can lead to confusion and perhaps boredom if it doesn't live up to the reader's expectations. But both work wonderfully in the right hands.

Nikki Gamble: Berlie, I know you have just returned from a trip to Peru. I wonder if any new stories are emerging from your experiences there.

Berlie Doherty: Peru was an incredibly vivid experience for me, and of course I wrote a diary all the time I was there, but knowing me, it will be twenty years before anything shapes up into a book. Already little descriptive incidents are popping into the thing I'm writing at the moment - but that's how it works - when you're writing something, everything that happens around you seems to find a place in it. But the big thing - a novel set in Peru, would need an enormous amount of thinking about. Maybe.

Theano Manoli What is the best thing about writing for children?

Berlie Doherty The best thing about writing for children is the children themselves! They are so enthusiastic, and it's always wonderful to talk to them about books and what they like to read.

 Mathew Tobin: There are many children's authors out there whose writing has a distinctive voice - when you read them you can tell that you're reading a book by that author almost without looking at who wrote the book. You also have a unique, recognisable voice but I wondered if, when reading, you ever come across a writer whose voice you wish you could steal - if only for a short time !

Berlie Doherty: Thank you Mathew - that's honestly the best thing you can say to a writer! I admire many writers - recently Philippa Gregory,- and individual voices like David Almond, Alan Garner, Kevin Crossley-Holland - and many more.

Nikki Gamble: The time has flown. Berlie, I'd like to thank you for giving your time this evening to answer our questions and for providing food for thought.

Berlie Doherty: Thanks Nikki, and thanks to everyone who wrote to me!

Aileen Withington: Sorry I am just too late to join the discussion! It makes fascinating reading. I was very interested to hear Berlie's comments about her thinking behind the duality of Abela and Rosa's stories, and also her technique of moving away from Abela's horrifying past once she, Abela, began to be cared for at last.