Joan Aiken (4 September 1924 – 4 January 2004)

An English novelist. She was born in Rye, East Sussex, into a family of writers, including her father, American poet Conrad Aiken (who won a Pulitzer Prize for his poetry), her sister, Jane Aiken Hodge and her brother John Aiken (with her siblings, Joan Aiken authored Conrad Aiken Remembered (1989), a short, subtle appreciation of their complex and difficult father). Joan's mother, Canadian-born Jessie MacDonald, a Masters graduate from Radcliffe College, married English writer Martin Armstrong soon after separating from Conrad Aiken.