Mary McCallum

In 2013 she co-founded Mākaro Press with her son.

McCallum has published in a number of literary journals including short stories in Turbine (2008) and poetry in Landfall (#133, 1980).

Her novel The Blue won the New Zealand Society of Authors Hubert Church Best First Book Award for Fiction and the Readers' Choice Award at the 2008 Montana New Zealand Book Awards.

In 2008 McCallum was shortlisted for the Glenn Schaeffer Prize in Modern Letters.

McCallum's first novel, The Blue, was published in 2007. In 2014 she published a novel for children's, Dappled Annie and the Tigrish, with illustrations Annie Hayward.

In 2006 McCallum published a collection of essays entitled Eastbourne, 100 Years with Alison Carew.

McCallum has been a feature writer for New Zealand Listener, Dominion Post, The Press, New Novel Review. Since 2002 she has reviewed books for Radio New Zealand and in 2007 for the Good Morning show on TVNZ. She has also worked as a tutor, including teaching creative writing at Massey University since 2008.

McCallum won the PEN Young Writer of the Year Award in 1979 and her writing was praised in the Denis Glover Awards. She was awarded the 2003/2004 Lilian Ida Smith Award.

Mary McCallum (born 1961) is an author and journalist from New Zealand.

McCallum was born in 1961 in Lusaka, Zambia. Aged four, she moved to New Zealand and was educated in Wellington and the United Kingdom, including at the Wellington Girls’ College. In 1981 she received a BA in English Literature and Political Science from the Victoria University of Wellington (including studying under Bill Manhire). In 2005 she received an MA in Creative Writing from the International Institute in Modern Letters, Victoria University of Wellington.