Mary-anne Scott

Mary-anne Scott is a writer, singer and musician. Her books have been shortlisted for awards and Snakes and Ladders won the Children's Choice award for the Young Adult category in the New Zealand Post Book Awards for Children and Young Adults in 2013. She lives in Havelock North, New Zealand, and is the mother of four sons and grandmother of two boys.

Mary-anne Scott
OccupationWriter
NationalityNew Zealand
Website
maryannescott.com

Biography

Mary-anne Scott was one of nine children in a family where music played a large part. Each child was encouraged to learn two musical instruments (for Mary-anne, these were cello and guitar) and music practice times were strictly enforced.[1] When school musicals were performed, their father wrote the music and their mother Joy Watson, herself a best-selling author of children's books,[2] wrote the words.[3]

After years of writing short stories, Mary-anne did a creative writing course at Hawke's Bay's Eastern Institute of Technology.[4] She gained an NZSA mentorship with author David Hill,[3] and then did the one-year Whitireia Polytechnic’s Diploma in Creative Writing course[5] with tutor Mandy Hager in 2011.[4] She has published a number of short stories and has been short-listed for the National Flash Fiction awards.[6] She has been a speaker at several literary festivals, including the Hawke's Bay Readers and Writers Festival in 2013[7] and Featherston Booktown in 2016,[8] and she was a Judge for the Ronald Hugh Morrieson Literary Awards 2018.[9]

Mary-anne and her husband Paul[5] have four sons and two grandsons and live in Havelock North,[2] Hawke's Bay. As well as being a singer, she plays and teaches the guitar.[3]

Mary-anne's experience of bringing up boys, listening to them and their friends and teaching cello and guitar to high school students has imbued and inspired her writing for young adults[2][5] and also led to a role as writer of a newspaper column on parenting teenagers.[9] Speaking of Coming Home to Roost, her publisher has commented on the authenticity of the dialogue and of the teenager-parent relationships displayed in her writing and noted that this was the first young adult novel published in New Zealand to deal with the issue of unplanned parenthood told from the male point of view.[10]

Awards and prizes 

Snakes and Ladders was shortlisted for the YA category and won the YA category of the Children's Choice award in the NZ Post Book Awards for Children and Young Adults in 2013. It was also short-listed for the LIANZA awards. Coming Home to Roost was awarded a Storylines Notable Book Award in 2017 and was short-listed as a finalist for the NZ children's book awards.[6]

Sticking with Pigs was a finalist in the Copyright Licensing NZ Award for Young Adult Fiction in the 2018 NZ Book Awards for Children and Young Adults.[11][12]

Bibliography 

Snakes and Ladders (Scholastic, 2012)

Coming Home to Roost (Penguin Random House, 2016)

Sticking with Pigs (One Tree House, 2018)

Spearo (One Tree House, 2020)

References
  1. "Music". Mary-anne Scott. Retrieved 23 October 2018.
  2. "Mary-Anne Scott: parenting inspiration for prose". NZ Herald. 1 July 2017. Retrieved 14 October 2018.
  3. "Mary-anne Scott". Penguin Books NZ. Retrieved 14 October 2018.
  4. Packer, Ann (30 May 2013). "More ladders than snakes". Noted. Retrieved 14 October 2018.
  5. "Mary-anne Scott". Moore Stephens Markhams. Winter 2013. Retrieved 14 October 2018.
  6. "Mary-anne Scott". NZSA The New Zealand Society of Authors (PEN NZ Inc) Te Puni Kaituhi o Aotearoa. Retrieved 14 October 2018.
  7. "Guest authors announced for Hawke's Bay Readers and Writers Festival". Voxy.co.nz. 12 March 2013. Retrieved 14 October 2018.
  8. "Programme of Events Booktown 2016". Featherston Booktown. Retrieved 14 October 2018.
  9. "Meet the 2018 Judges". Ronald Hugh Morrieson Literary Awards. Retrieved 14 October 2018.
  10. Arthur, Jane (10 July 2017). "Book Awards: the Young Adult Fiction Finalists". The Sapling. Retrieved 23 October 2018.
  11. "New Zealand Book Awards for Children & Young Adults: 2018 Awards: Shortlist". NZ Book Awards Trust. Retrieved 13 December 2018.
  12. "Finalists announced for NZ Book Awards for Children and Young Adults 2018". Noted: New Zealand Listener. 6 June 2018. Retrieved 13 December 2018.
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