Multi-award-winning Wellington-based author Mandy Hager is the winner of the 2019 Storylines Margaret Mahy Medal for life-time achievement and a distinguished contribution to New Zealand’s literature for young people.

Best-known as a writer of young adult fiction, Mandy Hagar has also written fiction and non-fiction for younger children, as well as film scripts and educational programmes. In 2017 she published her first adult novel, Heloise, long-listed for New Zealand’s premier adult Ockham Book Awards.

From the publication in 1995 of Tom’s Story for Mallinson Rendel, and for nearly every work of fiction since, Mandy Hager has achieved the unusual feat of winning a major award or being shortlisted. She has also been extensively published by major US publishers.

Her awards include the LIANZA Book Awards for Young Adult fiction three times, the New Zealand Post Children’s Book Awards for YA fiction, USA’s Golden Wings Excellence Award and Golden Wings Award, and five Storylines Notable Book Awards. In 2015, for her novel Singing Home the Whale, she was awarded the Margaret Mahy Book of the Year award, and the Best Young Adult Fiction Award at the New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults. This novel was also chosen by Storylines (as the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY) New Zealand section) as its 2016 IBBY Honour Book for Writing. Mandy has also featured in international awards for her film scripts.

In 2012 she was awarded the New Zealand Society of Authors’ Peter and Dianne Beatson Fellowship; in 2014 Katherine Mansfield Fellowship to Menton, France, and in 2015 she was Waikato University’s Writer in Residence.

A trained teacher, Mandy Hagar holds an Advanced Diploma in Fine Arts from Whitireia Polytechnic, an MA in Creative Writing from Victoria University, and has taught Novel Writing at the Whitireia’s Creative Writing programme. She has appeared at all New Zealand’s major writers’ festivals and is a regular visitor to schools.

The Margaret Mahy Medal will be presented to Mandy at the Storylines Trust annual Storylines Margaret Mahy National Awards Day in Auckland on Sunday 31 March, 2019.

More information regarding this event here 

Read more about the Storylines Margaret.Mahy Medal and previous winners.

Read the full news release about Mandy’s award here. 

Mandy is available for interview; please contact Storylines Administrator Vicki Cunningham at childlitnz@storylines.org.nz