Fleur Beale is the author of many award-winning books for children and young adults - more than 40 books published in New Zealand, the United States and England. She is the only writer to have twice won the Storylines Gaelyn Gordon Award for a Much-Loved Book- with Slide the Corner in 2007 and I Am Not Esther in 2009. She won the Esther Glen Award for distinguished contribution to children's literature for Juno of Taris in the 2009 LIANZA Children's Book Awards. Fierce September won the YA category in the 2011 NZ Post Children's Book Awards and the LIANZA Young Adult Award in 2011. In 2012 she won the Margaret Mahy Medal for her outstanding contribution to children's writing and in 2015 she was made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit. A former high-school teacher, she lives in Wellington.