Mary McCallum

Mary McCallum’s first novel The Blue (Penguin 2007) won Best First Book of Prose and Readers’ Choice at the Montana NZ Book Awards.

She was also short-listed for the 2008 Prize in Modern Letters, and serialized by Radio NZ. The Blue was Mary’s folio for the MA in Creative Writing at Victoria University’s International Institute of Modern Letters and in draft form won her the Lilian Ida Smith Award. She was awarded Creative NZ’s 2007 Louis Johnson Bursary to work on her second novel, Precarious, and is also working on a children’s novel with local artist Annie Hayward.

Born in Zambia, McCallum has lived in NZ since the age of four. As an emerging poet in the late 1970s, Mary won the Pen Young Writer of the Year Award, was commended for the Denis Glover Award and published in Landfall. While studying for her BA in English Literature and Political Science at Victoria University, she was a student of one of Bill Manhire’s undergraduate writing courses.

Mary went on to complete a Journalism Diploma at Canterbury University, and worked for radio and television news and current affairs in NZ and Europe. This included a women’s cable news programme and television arts show The Edge. You can still hear Mary on Radio NZ’s Nine to Noon as a regular book reviewer, and she continues to freelance as feature writer. She also works as a publisher’s reader, a creative writing tutor (Massey University), and one day a week as a bookseller at Rona Gallery (since 2003!). Mary was the Wellington Co-ordinator for the Storylines Festival in 2006, a trustee of the French-NZ writers’ residency Randell Cottage, and an ardent blogger on O Audacious Book www.mary-mccallum.blogspot.com.

Mary is married to Wellington lawyer and olive grower Ian Stewart. They have three children and live between Eastbourne and their Wairarapa olive grove.