Maura Pierlot is an award-winning author and playwright who hails from New York, but has called Canberra home for nearly thirty years. Her writing delves into complex issues including memory, identity, self and, more recently, mental health.
Maura’s debut full-length work, Fragments, enjoyed a sellout season at The Street Theatre in October 2019, programmed for ACT Mental Health Month. Maura is the winner of the SOLO Monologue Competition, Hothouse Theatre for her play, Tapping Out, which went on to receive three awards at Short+Sweet Sydney (2017). A former medical news reporter and editor of Australian Medicine, Maura also writes for children and young adults. In 2017 she was named winner of the CBCA Aspiring Writers Mentorship Program, and recipient of the Charlotte Waring Barton Award, for her young adult manuscript, Freefalling (now True North). Maura’s first picture book, The Trouble in Tune Town won the 2018 ACT Writing and Publishing Award (Children’s category), along with international accolades.
Maura has a bachelor’s degree, master’s degree and doctorate, each in philosophy, specialising in ethics. When she’s not busy creating, she visits schools and libraries as a guest reader and speaker, serves as a Role Model for Books in Homes, and contributes reviews for the Children’s Book Council of Australia’s online magazine, Reading Time.
| FRAGMENTS by Maura Pierlot |
