Marion Halligan
Marion Halligan is one of sixty authors who attended The Press Christchurch Writers Festival from September 4th to 7th, 2008
Profile
Marion Halligan was born in Newcastle and attended school and university there, after getting her M.A. in Canberra. She worked for some time as a schoolteacher and, with her lecturer husband and her children, lived in France and Cambridge for some of the 1970s.
She began writing book reviews and newspaper articles and wrote short stories, some of which were published in literary magazines. In 1987 her first novel appeared and since then there have been a number of well received and interesting novels and short story collections as well as reminiscences of her time in France and a unique book called The taste of memory which revisits many of the people and places and food from her previous work. Food has featured in much of her work and she is adept at providing mouth watering description!
In 2006 her novel The apricot Colonel appeared and it was a change of pace in that it was a light murder mystery. It introduced book editor Cassandra Travers who meets the gentleman of the title while editing his war memoir. Together they solve a mystery among the café society of Canberra. They returned in Murder on the Apricot Coast in 2008 in which grimmer subject matter concerning illegal immigration and child abuse is part of the backdrop to an otherwise sunny mystery with charm and food description aplenty.
