Mary Hopper

Mary Hooper has been writing professionally for over twenty years. She started by writing short stories and serials for teenage and women's magazines when her children were small. Having done a few hundred, and thinking it would be good to see something more permanent on the shelves, she wrote and had published fifteen teenage novels. Following this, she wrote another fifteen novels or so for younger readers, all humorous, including the Revolting Bridesmaid series for Blackie/Puffin and the School Friends Series for Mammoth. She is now happy to be writing for teenagers again, and at present is doing masses of research for a book set in London in the year of the Great Plague, 1665.

Mary left school at 15 with no qualifications. She worked as a secretary for some years, then got married and had two children, Rowan and Gemma, both now grown up. She took an English degree at Reading University as a mature student and graduated in 1990. She has also worked as a freelance fiction editor on two magazines.

She describes her hobbies as "pottering, doing things with dried flowers, being nosy, moving pictures around on walls and collecting china rabbits." She lives in a small old cottage in Hampshire, where all her hobbies are indulged!

Website: http://www.maryhooper.co.uk/