ANNA MACKENZIE

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.