Meeting authors is so much fun. Author Mary Watson is no exception! She took over the LitJoy Crate Instagram account and I couldn’t be more pleased to see some of the inspiration for the setting of her book, The Wren Hunt (I love Ireland!) and to hear her amazing accent.
Mary Watson grew up in Cape Town where she worked as an art museum custodian, library assistant, actress in children’s musicals, front-of-house duty manager, and university lecturer. She earned her doctorate in film studies and has always been obsessed with stories.
Mary wrote her first book (with illustrations) when she was five. When she was sixteen, she had a vivid dream about a girl and her father who walked in a magic garden, hiding an awful secret. This grew into a collection of connected short stories, Moss (Kwela, 2004) which she wrote under the mentorship of André Brink at the University of Cape Town. She was awarded the Caine Prize in 2006. Her second book, The Cutting Room (Penguin South Africa, 2013), is about ghosts and crime.
She moved to Galway, Ireland in 2008. After writing The Cutting Room, she wanted to write a fantasy. After her youngest child was born, she found reading YA books kept her awake during the long nights. She was lost in stories of brave girls. Of magic worlds and dystopias, zombies and vampires, queens and assassins while (almost) everyone around her slept. It was here that the first seeds of The Wren Hunt were planted.
Fortunes and Folklore crate which includes The Wren Hunt by Mary Watson. Photo Credit: @chapter_break
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