Author and screenwriter Mark Haddon was born in Northampton, U.K. in 1962. He received a B.A. in English from Merton College and a MSc in English Literature from Edinburgh University. Since 1996, he has worked on numerous television projects. He has won two BAFTAs and The Royal Television Society Best Children's Drama for Microsoap, which he created and wrote 12 out of 25 episodes. He also wrote the screenplay for the BBC television adaption of Fungus the Bogeyman. He has written fifteen children's books including the Agent Z series. In 1994, he was shortlisted for the Smarties Prize for The Real Porky Philips. He won the 2003 Whitbread Book of the Year Award for his novel The Curious… Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, which provides a realistic insight into what it is like to have autism. He currently lives in Oxford with his family.