Iona McNaughton

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

McNaughton, Iona (1954 –) writes for young adults and has also had a number of stories published in the School Journal. She has also had work published in story collections for children.

Iona McNaughton grew up on a farm in Southland, leaving home to go to Otago University in Dunedin. She works as a writer and an editor, and also teaches children's writing at Onslow Community Education.

McNaughton’s books for young adults include Summer of Shadows (Scholastic, 1997) and One-way Ticket (Scholastic, 2004). Summer of Shadows received the Tom Fitzgibbon Award for previously unpublished writers in 1996; the novel was also short-listed for the senior category of the 1998 Aim Children’s Book Awards.

In a review of Summer of Shadows in The Dominion, Norman Bilbrough writes, ‘The big issues of death, sexual trust and painful independence are explored here, and it’s told without pretension, just good accessible prose which pulls the reader inexorably along.’ Barbara Murison, reviewing One-way Ticket in Around the Bookshops, describes the novel as 'truly hard to put down.’

WRITERS IN SCHOOLS INFORMATION

McNaughton is available for Writers in Schools visits. She can speak to children from primary school age through to intermediate and secondary school age. She is happy to discuss being an educational book writer, a teen fiction writer, and a non-fiction writer. She can run a range of sessions, and is flexible about how many students she can speak to in a single session depending on the nature of the session. She is able to participate in tours outside of her region.

MEDIA LINKS AND CLIPS

• Iona McNaughton's profile on the Scholastic site