Fleur Beale

Fleur Beale was born in 1945 in New Zealand. She is a teenage fiction writer. She attended Victoria University and Christchurch Teacher's Training College. She taught at Melville High School from the mid 80s to late 90s in Hamilton, Waikato and in Wellington. Beale's first stories were written for the children's radio programme Grandpa's Place. Her first book was a small reader and picture book for young children and she started to write for teenagers in 1993. Her stories often involve troubled adolescents engaged in outdoor activities. Beale was a finalist in the AIM Children's Book Awards and her 1998 novel I Am Not Esther was shortlisted for the senior fiction section of the 1999 New Zealand Post Children's Book Awards. In 1999 she was awarded the Children's Writing Fellowship at Dunedin College of Education and quit teaching to write full-time. Her 2001 novel Ambushed was a finalist for the Junior Fiction section of the 2002 New Zealand Post Children's Book Awards. Her 2004 account of how an indigenous girl discovers how her education can save her tribal lands (My Story A New Song in the Land. The Writings of Atapo, Pahia, received a Notable Book award in 2005 as did Walking Lightly. In 2012, Beale became the last recipient of the Margaret Mahy Award during Margaret Mahy's lifetime In 2015 she won the LIANZA Librarians' Choice Award 2015 with her title I Am Rebecca. Her book's I Am Not Esther and Being Magdalene made the New Zealand Best Seller List in 2015.