BIOGRAPHY ¦ INTERVIEW ¦ INSPIRATION

Photograph © Keith Meadley

M.I. McAllister Margi McAllister grew up on the north-east coast of England with her parents and older sister. At school she was involved in lots of dance and drama, and she 'wrote' stories in her head even before she could write. She began a course in Education and Dance in Exmouth, then came back to Newcastle to do a BEd in English. Margi married a clergyman in 1978 and had three children. After years of trying to write, she did an adult education course in writing short stories and started to be published in magazines.

Margi and her family moved to Corbridge in August 1992. She wrote stories, did bits of teaching, worked in a retreat house, cleaned the parish church, and took any work to make ends meet while fitting around her family. Meanwhile, she worked on a children's book which she thought nobody would want to read but herself. It was accepted by the Oxford University Press in 1997 and came out as A Friend for Rachel (it's now titled The Secret Mice).

At this time Margi had a big garden with a field of sheep on the other side of the hedge. She shared this garden with a family of hedgehogs, a rabbit and a red squirrel — Margi has always been particularly fond of red squirrels.

Urchin of the Riding Stars, the first in The Mistmantle Chronicles, is Margi's first book for Bloomsbury and will be published in January 2005.

Bibliography
The Mistmantle Chronicles: Urchin of the Riding Stars
The Life Shop
A Friend for Rachel
Hold My Hand and Run
Ghost at the Window
The Octave of Angels
Never Wash Your Hair
The Worst of the Vikings
The Mean Dream Wander Machine
The Doughnut Dilemma
Winner
My Guinea Pig is Innocent
Snow Troll
Black Death
Threads of Deceit