Catherine MacPhail

Catherine MacPhail (born 25 January 1946, Greenock) is a Scottish-born author. MacPhail has quickly established a reputation as a writer of gritty, urban stories that tackle emotional, contemporary issues but always work towards a positive solution and are usually realistic. Although she has had other jobs, she always wanted to be a writer but she didn't think she would be suited to it.^[1] Her first published work was a sort of "twist-in-the-tale" story in Titbits, followed by a story in the Sunday Post. After she had won a romantic story competition in Woman's Weekly, she decided to concentrate on romantic novels, but after writing two, she decided that it wasn't right for her. ^[2] In addition to writing books for children around their teens, she also writes for adults, she is the author of the BBC Radio 2 series, My Mammy And Me.

Macphail was also previously president of the Scottish Association of Writers and chair of the Scottish Children's Writers and Illustrators.^{[citation needed]}

Bibliography

MacPhail's first try at a children's novel was entitled Run, Zan, Run, and she says that she has "never enjoyed writing anything so much." It was inspired by her youngest daughter, Katie was being bullied at school and she wanted to raise the awareness of how little help is actually available to children who are being bullied. Run, Zan, Run was the winner of the 1994 Kathleen Fidler Award for new Scottish Writing and was positively received by critics. Catherine’s next book was entitled Fighting Back, and was equally uncompromising, but this time it was about loan-sharking. Fighting Back won one of the first Scottish Arts Council Children’s Book Awards in 1999 and was well-received, to a wide-audience. Catherine’s novel following it, was entitled Fugitive, has also received widespread acclaim. She has also written a series of four books entitled Nemesis, which concluded in May 2008. Catherine bases some of her books on real life experiences.

Novels ^[3]

• Run, Zan, Run (1994)
• Fighting Back (1998)
• Fugitive (1999)
• Missing (2000)
• A Kind of Magic (2001)
• Bad Company (2001)
• Dark Waters (2003)
• Picking on Percy(2003)
• Wheels (2003)
• Another Me(2003)
• Get That Ghost to Go! (2003)
• Catch Us If You Can (2004)
• Tribes (2004)
• Underworld (2004)
• Sticks and Stones (2005)
• Roxy's Baby (2005)
• Traitors' Gate (2005)
• Get That Ghost to Go Too (2006)
• Dead Man's Close (2006)
• Under the Skin (2007)
• Worse Than Boys(2007)
• Hide and Seek (2009)
• Grass

Out of the Depths Green Green Grass (TBA)<br
Series ^[3]

1. Granny Nothing
2. Granny Nothing (2003)
3. Granny Nothing and the Shrunken Head (2003)
4. Granny Nothing and the Rusty Key (2004)
5. Granny Nothing and the Secret Weapon (2004)
6. Granny Nothing 6 (TBA)

Nemesis series
1. Into the Shadows (2006)
2. The Beast Within (2007)
3. Sinister Intent (2007)
4. Ride of Death (2008) ^[3]

Personal life

MacPhail was married. She has three children, one named Katie, whom she got the inspiration from her first book, who was being bullied at the time. She has two other children, one named David (an author who has sketches on TV and who plays on stage) and one other named Sarah, a year older than Katie and has MacPhail's book Tribes (2004). MacPhail says that she would write for free, but she enjoys to get paid for it. On her website, as a child she asks "Do you know what an eejit is? Someone who is one sandwich short of a picnic … whose lift doesn’t go … well, you know what I mean. Eejit is a wonderful Scottish/Irish word that seemed to sum me up perfectly when I was growing up." (Eejit is a Scottish/Irish word for someone idiotic or simple.) "I was always trying to change my image. Act sophisticated, grown up, sensible…and then a story would just plop into my mind and BANG! There I’d go, smack into another lamppost." ^[4] She also had an encounter with writer, Anthony Horowitz (writer of the popular Alex Rider series) which involved her son.

MacPhail grew up with three sisters and a widowed mother. Although her father died when she was just two, her little sister was born two months after he died. She claims that "her childhood was full of fun, even though it must have been so hard for my mum. Me and my sisters knew nothing of the hardship she must have had. My mother was always reading books and was never away from the library." MacPhail has stated in her own website she can always remember thinking what a wonderful place it was. You could walk out with a stackful of books and didn’t even pay for them! "It was my mum who gave me my love of reading." ^[5]

"Yet, my own background, my home town, have been the inspiration for most of my writing. A comedy series called ‘My Mammy and Me’, another one called ‘We Gotta Get Outta This Place.’ Set in Greenock, inspired by my own experiences. And my first book, the book that changed my life, Run Zan Run, based on what happened to my own daughter Katie, in Greenock. A tip, if you want to be a writer, don’t ever think nothing ever happens to you, because your own life is so interesting, if you just think about it. My only regret? I wish I had started sooner. But once I’d started? There was no stopping me."

References

External links

• MacPhail's Official Twitter Page]
• MacPhail's Facebook Page
• MacPhail's New Official Website (2012)
• MacPhail's Official Website
• Northern Children's Book Festival Bio
• Puffin Author Page
• Fantistic Fiction Author's Index
• Puffin Books AuthorBiography