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About the author

I was born in Copenhagen in 1956.

I am number eight of ten children and grew up in a three room apartment. My parents were very religious, we didn’t have television, were not allowed to drink alcohol, dance and go to movies. I played football, but could not attend a football club.

I grew up with a lot of restrictions, but did not want to be ‘the Christian boy’ and tried to compensate by doing stupid stuff like braking in to a drugstore.

When I became a writer this was great stuff to write about. My first book, Tiny heroes are also heroes (Små helte er også helte, Gyldendal) was published in 1989. Since then I have been writing more than 50 books for children, youngsters and adults.

In 2005 I got the finest prize in Denmark for children books (Kulturministeriets børnebogspris) for A sick friend (En dødssyg ven, Gyldendal 2003) and the same year I got another author prize for Powerlack (Strømsvigt, Carlsen 2004), which I wrote with my wife, Ida-Marie Rendtorff.

I mainly write realistic novels with modern themes. In 2009 came An ugly weekend, which is a novel about young people, who make the wrong choices.

Together with Ida-Marie Rendtorff I am writing a detective series taking place in Copenhagen. It is called Team A (Alinea, 2008-2009). So far there are five books in the series. Ida-Marie and I also wrote a book on writing: What if … (Alinea 2008).

I travel around Denmark giving talks on my books, and I also instruct writing workshops. All thanks to The program for children and young people meeting artists.

Daniel Zimakoff.

Daniel Zimakoff E-mail: daniel@danielzimakoff.dk Telefon: 31711956