Margi McAllister

Margi (M I) McAllister is an author because early experience taught her that she’s not much good at anything else. She has published four children’s/teen novels for Oxford University Press, one for Lion, and lots of titles for the OUP Treetops series (which you don’t often find in bookshops but are widely available in schools).

She’s particularly happy to have written Treetops books to encourage reluctant readers, and to receive fan mail from un-bookish boys who enjoyed The Doughnut Dilemma (about a footballer who likes doughnuts) and The Worst of the Vikings, (about three Vikings who don’t know what pillaging is, but are pretty certain that they won’t like it.)

Margi doesn’t set out to write ‘Christian fiction’, and isn’t always sure what that is. What happens is that what she is and believes inluences the books – hence the Christian themes in the Mistmantle series. From the ages of seven to eleven she lived in Narnia, which may account for a lot. Mistmantle has given her the chance to write about big themes, adventure, emotion, heroism, spirituality, and squirrels.

Margi has three grown up children and a tame clergyman. (Well, not very tame.) She is a native Northumbrian, but now lives in Yorkshire.