birth_place birth_date image article_title name
sheffield 1958 belbin-profile-pic . png david belbin
 david belbin
david belbin

david belbin -lrb- born 1958 -rrb- is an english novelist .
he was born in nottingham , yorkshire and has lived in nottingham since attending the university of nottingham where he earned a degree in english literature and american studies .
after university , he taught english and media studies in nottingham before becoming a full-time writer in 1994 .
since 2002 , he has worked part-time at nottingham trent university , where he teaches creative writing .
belbin began his career by writing young adult fiction , where his work is known for breaking boundaries and dealing responsibly with difficult social issues that affect teenagers .
he first attained success with a number of books for scholastic 's point crime series .
one of these , `` avenging angel '' , led to his own popular series , the beat , which followed a group of young police officers through their two-year probationary period , culminating in the adult novel length `` fallen angel '' in 2000 .
the series dealt with racism , rape , paedophilia and homosexuality as well as conventional crimes , often of the kind committed by teenagers .
belbin 's best-known young adult novel is `` love lessons '' , which was published in 1998 .
`` it is a full-length novel which examines the machinations and morality of a sexual affair between a male english teacher and a fifteen-year-old female student , '' belbin has said .
`` i wrote the first draft as an adult novel .
the young-adult version took me nearly ten years and a brave editor to get right , but it turned out to be a better book for it . ''
`` denial '' , published in 2004 , deals with a similar theme -- a teacher accused of molesting a student -- in the first person , and many readers found it even more shocking .
his most popular novels this century are `` festival '' -lrb- 2002 -rrb- about the glastonbury pop festival , and `` the last virgin '' -lrb- 2003 -rrb- which is a wide ranging book about teenage sexuality : ` the author always chooses to understand rather than condemn .
he has written numerous novels about young adults but this is his most outspoken . '
since the publication of `` nicked ! ''
in 1999 , belbin has written a string of short novels for ` reluctant ' readers , often dealing with the same kind of edgy themes as his full length work .
`` stray '' -lrb- 2006 -rrb- is about a girl gang and drug dealing , while `` shouting at the stars '' -lrb- 2005 -rrb- about the nervous breakdown of a disabled teenage singer/songwriter is one of many books that reflect belbin 's interest in popular music .
belbin 's fiction for adults reflects many of the same concerns as his work for teenagers , but without the limits dictated by young adult fiction 's place in children 's literature .
witchcraft -lrb- ambit magazine , 1989 -rrb- is about ritual sexual abuse of children .
different ways of getting drunk looks at a young woman 's experiments with drugs and bisexuality .
vasectomy -lrb- horizon magazine , 2008 -rrb- shows a philandering labour mp in the run up to the iraq war .
his first ` adult ' novel , the pretender -lrb- five leaves -rrb- was about literary forgery .
he has also written an early guide to ebay and edited the crime express series of novellas which features work by both major and emerging crime writers .
belbin 's work has been translated into more than twenty-five languages .
he has written several comics on social issues for unicef including ` cry me a river ' , about globalisation .
his 2015 contribution to the dawn of the unread graphic stories series , ` shelves ' , is about his friendship with the novelist stanley middleton and the nottingham novel .
in 2004 , belbin organised turning point , the uk 's first national conference on young adult fiction which featured many significant young adult fiction authors , including kevin brooks , melvyn burgess , anne cassidy , keith gray , graham marks , nicola morgan , beverley naidoo and bali rai .
in 2012 , he became a trustee of nottingham playhouse .
in 2014 , he became chair of the company set up to bid for nottingham to become a unesco city of literature .
in 2011 , belbin began publishing a series of nottingham based novels about crime and politics , `` bone and cane '' -lrb- tindal street press -rrb- , which follows a new labour mp , sarah bone , and her ex-lover , convicted cannabis producer , nick cane , from 1997 onwards .
the second novel in the sequence , `` what you do n't know '' appeared in 2012 .
the same year saw his novel `` student '' , which chronicles the undergraduate years of a young woman in nottingham and has been described as belonging to the emerging new-adult fiction genre .
