Winner of the WA Premier's Award for Children's Writing Shirley Marr chats about A Glasshouse of Stars and her decision to write the manuscript in second person. Plus, a sneak peek at her brand new middle grade novel, All Four Quarters of the Moon.
Shirley Marr is a first-generation Chinese-Australian living in Perth and an author of young adult and children's fiction, including YA novels Fury and Preloved, and children’s novels Little Jiang and A Glasshouse of Stars.
She describes herself as having a Western mind and an Eastern heart. She likes to write in the space in the middle where they both collide, basing her stories on her own personal experiences of migration and growing up in Australia, along with the folk and fairy tales from her mother.
Arriving in mainland Australia from Christmas Island as a seven-year-old in the 1980s and experiencing the good, the bad and the wonder that comes with culture shock, Shirley has been in love with reading and writing from that early age. Shirley is a universe full of stars and stories and hopes to share the many other novels that she has inside her.