Maura Pierlot

Maura is an international award-winning children’s book author, playwright and filmmaker who creates on Ngunnawal / Ngambri country (Canberra). Her writing explores existential themes, prompting vital conversations about identity, mental wellbeing and the complexities of the human experience.

Tackling youth mental health themes, Maura’s acclaimed play, Fragments, is now an award-winning web series, supported by the ACT Government, a feature-length anthology film and a hybrid young adult novella. Maura’s recent releases include a YA novel, The Lies We Tell Ourselves, and Clutterbugs, both published in 2025 by Big Ideas Press, and Our Family Zoo, out with Scholastic Australia in 2026.

Maura enjoys writing creative non-fiction for children. Alphabetter – A Better You and Me, from A to Z (Affirm Press, February 2024), presents fun, relatable scenarios that encourage children to explore positive character traits and values. What Will You Make Today? (Storytorch Press, June 2023) empowers young readers to make a difference in the world. Maura’s first picture book, The Trouble in Tune Town, won the 2018 ACT Writing and Publishing Awards and several overseas honours.

Drawn at an early age to big ideas, Maura has a PhD in philosophy, specialising in ethics. She has worked as an ethicist, editor of Australian Medicine, medical writer/producer and business owner. Besides writing full-time, Maura visits schools and libraries as a guest reader and speaker. She is the founder of The Book Bench Project, a Canberra initiative that fosters a shared love of reading and sense of community. Maura is also a regular reviewer for the Children’s Book Council of Australia’s (CBCA) online magazine, Reading Time, a 2025 CBCA ACT Branch Ambassador, a Role Model and Sponsor for Books in Homes Australia and a qualified art therapist.

When she’s not busy thinking, dreaming and creating – and sometimes even when she is – Maura enjoys spending time with her family at their avocado farm set within a coastal NSW rainforest, a mountaintop property they share with wombats, echidnas, lyrebirds, kangaroos and two energetic Bordoodles.

To learn more about Maura’s work, check out ‘Works’ on this website,

or view her Writer’s CV and list of Publications and Awards.