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About Anna ...

Anna's work has earned her seven Notable Book Awards, an NZ Post Honour Award, Sir Julius Vogel Award and White Raven selection. In addition to writing fiction she edits magazines, mentors emerging writers and teaches creative writing workshops for adults and students. Her chief complaint in life is that there is never enough time.

Here's how she tells it:

I began writing fiction in 2001 with my first novel, High Tide, published in 2003. Nine titles later, I write full-time and squeeze in editing magazines, mentoring emerging writers and teaching creative writing. I write across a range of genres – contemporary, historic, dystopian, fantasy – which may not be the norm but it works for me. Each story is unique, and I tell it the way it wants to be told.

 

The backstory...

I was born in Palmerston North, New Zealand, but moved to Hawke’s Bay before I was two years old, and over the years have kept returning. Hawke's Bay skies feature in my earliest memories alongside a train made from cardboard boxes, gravel roads and the smell of wild thyme baking in the summer heat. I wrote my first novel  a collection of stories about an elf when I was six. Thanks to my mother's foresight I still have it.

 

Through my student years in Wellington I worked on the university newspaper, Salient, in layout until I gained the confidence to write. Jobs in publishing – magazines, broadsheets and coffee-table books – followed, then I was off overseas (young Kiwis tend to take flight before settling) where I had a range of jobs from nannying in London to hiring out fishing boats on the West Coast of Scotland. When the need for a ‘real' career kicked in, counselling, PR and marketing were the strands I followed. People and words feature large in all my career choices.

 

Interests

I tend towards the workaholic – no sooner do I finish one project than I start two others. When not writing, editing or teaching, I like to travel, cook, grow vegetables and read. Then there’s yoga, which keeps the rest balanced.

Anna Mackenzie, first novel, The Little Elf
Anna Mackenzie, all novels, stack of Books
Anna Mackenzie, garlic
Anna Mackenzie, author

Media kit:

Downloadable biography, author photos and media releases here.

Mackenzie says:

“I write across a range of genres because I’m fascinated by people rather than by a particular style or genre...

 

"For me, writing fiction is a way of exploring the intricacies and confusions of who we are.”

 

 

Click on a cover to view a book page

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