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Deborah Ellis is a Canadian author. Born in Cochrane, Ontario, she had to move several times in her childhood due to her parents' work. Ellis decided to start writing when she was 11-12 years old. When she grew up, her work and writing was mainly done by traveling and talking to others that have problems and documenting down the main things. She started to write her first book, The Breadwinner some time later. She had many jobs like an anti-war activist.
She traveled to Afghanistan in 1997 to help in refugee camps; from these interviews she wrote the four part series which includes The Breadwinner, a book about a girl named Parvana; Parvana's Journey, its sequel; Mud City, about a girl named Shauzia, Parvana's best friend; and an adult book, Women of the Afghan War. While The Breadwinner was inspired by an interview with a mother in a refugee camp, the subsequent books in the trilogy were more imaginative explorations of how children would survive.
In 1999, her young adult novel Looking for X, which follows a young girl in her day to day life in a poor area of Toronto, Ontario, was published, and received the Governor General's Literary Award.
Ellis also wrote a book with Eric Walters about the plotted terrorist attacks in Canada. The book is called Bifocal, highlighting two boys and their sides to the story about what happened. Bifocal is a book about racism and rooting terrorists in Canada.
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