13 Facts About Fleur Beale

Fleur Una Maude Beale is a New Zealand teenage fiction writer, best known for her novel I Am Not Esther, which has been published worldwide.

Fleur Beale was born in Inglewood, Taranaki, New Zealand, on the farm where her father was born.

Fleur Beale grew up in the town and attended Inglewood High School From 1958, before attending Victoria University, Wellington and Christchurch Teachers' College, where she met her husband, Tim.

Fleur Beale taught at Melville High School in Hamilton from the mid 1980s to the late 1990s.

Fleur Beale's first book was a small reader and picture book for young children and she started to write for teenagers in 1993.

Fleur Beale was a finalist in the AIM Children's Book Awards and her 1998 novel I Am Not Esther was shortlisted for the senior fiction section of the 1999 New Zealand Post Children's Book Awards.

Fleur Beale's 2001 novel Ambushed was a finalist for the Junior Fiction section of the 2002 New Zealand Post Children's Book Awards.

In 2012, Fleur Beale became the last recipient of the Margaret Mahy Award during Margaret Mahy's lifetime.

Fleur Beale is concerned about the fate of her cousin, Miriam, who disappeared shortly before her arrival, but is barely mentioned by the family, other than her being "dead".

Fleur Beale knows that not all the children of the cult members are completely indoctrinated: her cousin Daniel wants to be a doctor, despite the proscription on higher education, and her schoolfriends misbehave when they are away from home.

Fleur Beale was inspired to write this by "a boy I taught who had been thrown out of his family because he wanted to be a doctor".

Fleur Beale describes the cultists with respect; she is hostile to the behaviour and not the people.

In 2012, Fleur Beale published a sequel to I Am Not Esther, titled I am Rebecca.