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Jenny Downham (born 1964) is a British novelist and an ex-actor. She has published one book, Before I Die, the fictional account of the last few months of a sixteen-year-old girl who has been dying of leukemia for 4 years. The book is told in the first person.

The book was acclaimed and was short listed for the 2007 Guardian Award and the 2008 Lancashire Children's Book of the Year, nominated for the 2008 Carnegie Medal and the 2008 Booktrust Teenage Prize, and won the 2008 Branford Boase Award.

The book follows the story of Tessa as it becomes apparent she will die. She has a list of things she wants to complete before her death, including sex, drugs and crime, for example. It also follows the ups and downs of Tessa's parents' relationship and her friend Zoey as she becomes pregnant and her boyfriend hates her for it. Furthermore Tessa falls in love with her neighbour Adam. As the book goes on, Tessa's thoughts are used to explore the nature of life. This novel is a very poignant tale that makes you wonder about how you are living your own life to the fullest. In 1998, she played Anna, the Ralph's Wife in Basil.

This author page uses material from the Wikipedia article "Jenny Downham", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0