Mary K Pershall
Mary Pershall grew up on a farm in Iowa, heart of the American corn and Bible belt. She escaped to Australia as a freshly graduated teacher in 1974, and has lived here ever since.
Mary edited and wrote articles for Pursuit, Challenge, Explore and Comet magazines, all published by the Victorian Education Department.
Mary has two daughters with her Collingwood supporter husband – her first novel You Take the High Road was published the day after her second daughter was born. Other novels and short stories followed, including A Long Way Home and Stormy, but no more babies!
In 1994 Mary became a relieving Assistant Principal at government secondary college in the Melbourne western metropolitan region, and gathered heaps of material for her stories.
With her eldest daughter Katherine, Mary wrote the novel Too Much to Ask For which was published as an Aussie Bites in 1998. Mary became a full-time writer in 2000 and the young adult novel Asking for Trouble, based on many of the teenagers she met in schools, was published in 2001.
Mary has since written a series based on classroom life with her younger daughter Anna: Two Weeks in Grade Six, A Term in Year 7, and Escape from Year 8. Other new titles include the Ruby Clair series: Ruby Clair: The Trouble with Ghosts (2008) and Ruby Clair: Ghost with a Message (2009).
Mary speaks to students and adults about what it takes to be a writer and what its like to write with one's daughter. She likes to explore the fun of turning real life into fiction and the stages she goes through in producing a novel.
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