Fleur Beale is one of New Zealand’s finest Young Adult fiction authors.
Earlier this year she was the recipient of the 2012 Margaret Mahy Medal and
Lecture Award and she has been nominated for, or won, the YA section of the New
Zealand Post Children’s Book Awards six times. Beale is one of our most active Writers in Schools
participants, and has visited hundreds of schools on behalf of the Book Council
in the past 20 years. As Education Manager here at the Book Council I’ve worked
with Fleur regularly and thought it was about time I interviewed her about her
writing, books and the subjects that fascinate her.
Fleur has had a remarkable
output since she began writing when her children were babies, with 50 published
titles to her name. She started out writing very short stories for a radio
programme called 'Grampa’s Place', eventually writing for National Radio for
older children. After ten years of writing for radio, Fleur won a competition,
and found herself with a firm supporter in the form of Dorothy Butler, and an
agent in the form of Ray Richards.
Fleur writes primarily Young
Adult fiction, but dabbles occasionally in junior fiction and has even
published one book for an adult audience. One of the most remarkable qualities
of her books is her ability to put herself into male teenage characters so
seamlessly. When I remark on this she says writing male characters is like
writing any character – you need to work out who they are very early on in the
process, what makes them tick, and what is important in their life. For Fleur,
character also drives where she sets her books – no matter if the action takes
place on farms, deserted islands, in small towns, or in a cult compound.
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