Mahy, Margaret

Author, screenwriter, national treasure.

Sad to hear of her passing as I've been reading A Summery Saturday Morning  to my young daughter a lot recently. I used to own her VHS copy of Akira which she sold at a charity auction during a SciFi Convention in Christchurch, New Zealand. She heartily recommended the film and was very enthusiastic about talking to folks there about storytelling of all kinds which I thought was rather cool.

Mahy’s books have sold all over the world, beginning with her first international success, The Lion in the Meadow, in 1969.

She followed this book with The Haunting, which won The Carnegie medal in Britain, and since 1980 she has been a full time writer.

Mahy worked as children’s librarian at Canterbury Library until then, writing in her spare time.

She has written more than 100 books, and says sitting in her bottom drawer is an 800-page novel that will probably never be published.

Margaret Mahy began writing at the age of seven, when she thought that the longer the story was the better it would be.

Mahy admits that she finds writing for television more difficult than writing a book. Television is primarily a visual medium and I find I need to relate to language rather than images. I’ve learnt to modify my style to make it more appropriate to television.

She says she never runs out of fresh ideas and finds them, in the most unusual places. I was walking past the Fendalton fish shop and I saw a sign advertising ‘Pot Boiling owls’ but the F had fallen off the Fowls and this crystallised into a sort of narrative.

Press, 8 December 1989 Puppet series co-scripted by Margaret Mahy

Overseas Productions

Aliens in the Family (1987)
Dramarama [The Horrible Story] (1987)
Playbus (The Princess and the Clown & Thunderstorms and Rainbows)

New Zealand Shows