Author Patrick Ness's refugee fund tops $1m

Patrick Ness has won the Carnegie Medal twice and the Costa Children's Book Award

A campaign set up by author Patrick Ness to raise funds for Syrian refugees has raised more than $1m in one week.

Ness, who wrote A Monster Calls and the Chaos Walking trilogy, tweeted on Thursday that $1,018,000, or £659,755 had been raised for Save The Children.

He started the campaign on 3 September, saying he was "tired of just tweeting despair" about the refugee crisis.

Since then, numerous other authors and publishers have come on board to match donations from members of the public.

Ness himself matched the first £10,000 of donations, and on Thursday said he had also "donated the last amount to get us over a million bucks".

Authors including Philip Pullman, Suzanne Collins, Paula Hawkins, Cressida Cowell, Anthony Horowitz, Jojo Moyes, Francesca Simon, David Nicholls and Jessie Burton have each pledged £10,000 to match public donations.

Publisher Egmont Press has put in £10,000, Penguin Random House has chipped in with £15,000 and Hachette UK has pledged £10,000 now and another £10,000 if and when the total reaches £1m.

Soon after he began the campaign, Ness told The Bookseller: "I am astonished at how people have responded. I think, by pure accident, I happened to express my frustration at the right moment."