Anna McQuinn

Anna McQuinn was born and grew up in County Kerry. She lived in the small town of Castleisland in the heart of Kerry Dairy country and is old enough to remember the old Fair days there - her maternal grandfather used to be a cattle drover and his mall restaurant attracted many old friends from up and down the country. Her dad grew up on a small dairy farm and Anna spent many hours with him visiting the farm to help his brother with milking and making silage.

Anna attended a small two-teacher national school three miles outside of town where her dad was a teacher. All of her friends lived on farms and she loved staying over for weekends, helping with feeding calves, moving cows around and cutting turf.

Anna read English and History in UCC then studied for her H Dip (specialising in Children’s Literature), teaching English for a number of years in Cork while she did so. In the late 1980s, like so many of her friends, she headed to the UK in search of work and was delighted to get a job in Children’s Publishing.

Since then, Anna has worked for over 20 years as an editor and publisher, producing hundreds of children’s books. In 2003, she left her full time publishing job to concentrate more on writing and has since written over 20 books. She now divides her time between developing book ideas, writing stories and working directly with children which really feeds her writing.