Mary Watson grew up in Cape Town, where she worked as an art museum custodian, library assistant, actor in children’s musicals, front-of-house duty manager in a theatre, and university lecturer. She earned a PhD in film studies and has long been driven by stories.

She attempted her first illustrated book at age five. At sixteen, a dream about a girl and her father walking a magic garden—while hiding an awful secret—inspired a collection of connected short stories, Moss (Kwela, 2004), written under André Brink’s mentorship at the University of Cape Town. She won the Caine Prize in 2006. Her second book, The Cutting Room (Penguin South Africa, 2013), deals with ghosts “sort of” and crime.

In 2009, she moved to Galway, Ireland. After The Cutting Room, she set out to write a fantasy novel. During the nights after her youngest child was born, she turned to YA books about brave girls and magic worlds, dystopias, zombies, vampires, queens, and assassins, and the first seeds of The Wren Hunt took root.