Catherine MacPhail

© John Mitchell

Catherine MacPhail shot to success when her first novel RUN, ZAN, RUN won the Kathleen Fidler Award for new Scottish fiction. Catherine has quickly established a reputation as a writer of gritty, urban stories that tackle emotive contemporary issues but always work towards a positive solution.

THE BASICS

Born: Greenock, January 25th 1946
Jobs: Assembling computers for IBM, housewife
Lives: Greenock
First Book for young people: Run Zan Run, 1994

THE BOOKS

Catherine MacPhail always wanted to be a writer, but "I didn't think wee lassies like me could do things like that. It was only after my children were born that I started going to the local Writers' Club. There I was given the confidence and encouragement to start sending my stories away." The first work she had published was a “twist-in-the-tale” story in Titbits magazine, followed by a story in The Sunday Post. After winning a romantic story competition in Woman’s Weekly, Catherine decided to concentrate on romantic novels. But after writing two, she decided “it wasn’t right for me”.

Run, Zan, Run was Catherine’s first attempt at a children's novel. “I have never enjoyed writing anything so much," she says. Catherine was moved to write about bullying after her youngest daughter Katie was tormented at school. Catherine wanted to raise awareness of how little help is available for children who are being bullied. Run, Zan, Run was the winner of the 1994 Kathleen Fidler Award for new Scottish writing.

Catherine’s next book, Fighting Back, was equally uncompromising. This time the subject was loan-sharking. Fighting Back won one of the first Scottish Arts Council Children’s Book Awards in 1999.

Catherine’s latest novel Fugitive has also received widespread acclaim. A librarian wrote to Catherine that “I don’t think in 33 years of librarianship I have ever been moved to write to an author before but your book was so witty, realistic and swiftly moving, I had to write and tell you so.”

Catherine’s next novel for children, Tribes, will be published early in 2001.

Catherine is a prolific writer. In addition to writing novels for children, she also writes for adults and is the creator and writer of the radio series My Mammy and Me, broadcast on BBC Radio 2

WHAT SHE SAYS...

“I would write for nothing, but to get paid for it is the tops.”

“My favourite book was Little Women and one of the characters, Jo, was a writer.”

“I always use real people in my stories… Run, Zan, Run is a book about something that happened to my daughter Katie and Fugitive uses the relationship between my friend and her son. I get a real person or situation and then as I start to dramatise it the character takes on a personality of its own.”

“The more you read, the better writer you will become. I often read books now to see how they have been written – how the author has created a character or built up the feeling of suspense.”

“I am usually working on several books at the one time. I often write six chapters and a synopsis for a publisher and send it off and then start another six chapters of another book.”

“I like to give myself a deadline of writing a chapter a day when I am working on a book. It doesn’t matter if I know it isn’t going right – I can always go back and fix it.”

[from the Penguin website]