Anna McQuinn

Profile

Anna McQuinn was born and grew up in County Kerry on the west coast of Ireland. She went to a small school with only 29 pupils where her dad was one of the two teachers. Once she learned to read, Anna couldn’t stop and would read anything – even the back of the Corn Flakes box while eating breakfast! Her dad once wrote on her school report, ‘if Anna would take her nose out of her comics she could be very good at lots of things’.

Anna read English and History at University College Cork, then studied to be an English teacher and also did a Masters in English on The Gothic Novel. She is addicted to crime novels but tries to read ‘proper’ books every third one. Her favourite writers are Walter Mosely, Kate O Brien, Patrick McCabe, Margaret Atwood, James Lee Burke, Carleen Brice, Alice Hoffmann and Emma Donoghue.

Anna taught English to reluctant learners for a number of years in Cork city before moveing to the UK to work in publishing. She worked as an editor and a publisher (occasionally writing under the pseudonyms Hannah Reidy and Hannah Roche – her two grandmothers’ names) for over 16 years but was able to devote much more time to honing her writing skills when she was laid off from her demanding, full-time publishing job in 2002. Since then she’s divided her time between writing, editing, publishing and working directly with very young children and their parents as part of the Sure Start Acton project. She feels tremendously lucky to have a job that involves so much work around books.

Anna is proud to live in Slough, even though most people know it as the town derided in John Betjeman’s poem or as the setting for the TV series, The Office. People often ask her how she left beautiful Kerry to live there and Anna always quotes her mother’s wise words, ‘you can’t eat the view’. She has been married for more than 21 years to her childhood sweetheart. A self-confessed basketball fanatic, Anna cheers on the Guildford Heat and has a passion for music. She spends much of her time reading crime novels and cereal boxes, singing and promoting her books.

Children's Books (Author)

Lulu reads to Zeki

Reviewed in BfK No. 192 (January 2012)

4
The Sleep Sheep

Reviewed in BfK No. 183 (July 2010)

5
My Friend Amy

Reviewed in BfK No. 179 (November 2009)

4
My Friend Jamal

Reviewed in BfK No. 175 (March 2009)

4
Lulu loves the Library

Reviewed in BfK No. 164 (May 2007)

3
Lulu Loves Stories

Reviewed in BfK No. ()

4

Children's Books (Contributor)

My Friend Jamal

Reviewed in BfK No. 175 (March 2009)

4

Articles


Multi-lingual Storytelling	BfK No. 180 (January 2010)	Anna McQuinn discusses storytelling with children with different home languages.