We are delighted to announce that we have acquired world rights to publish The Girl in the Mirror, award-winning poet and short story writer Jenny Blackford’s enthralling middle grade novel.  It will be published in the Eagle Books imprint in October 2019

About the book:

Maddy is picked on by bullies at her new school and terrified by ghosts in the old house her family has moved to – but she soon becomes friends with Clarissa, who slept in that same room and used the same mirror more than 100 years earlier. Then Maddy’s baby brother nearly dies of whooping cough, and Clarissa discovers that her poisonous Aunt Lily is even more evil than she seems. The two girls have to use all their intelligence and verve to fight against Aunt Lily’s plots, each in her own time, with help from Clarissa’s ghostly brother Bertie…but will they succeed?

An enthralling, original middle-grade novel by award-winning poet and short-story writer Jenny Blackford.

About the author:

Jenny Blackford writes poems and stories for people of all ages, usually with a tinge of myth and legend, ancient history, science, or deep time. Over 30 of her short stories and over 50 of her poems have appeared in Australian and international anthologies and journals including Westerly, Australian Poetry Journal, The Pedestal Magazine, Strange Horizons and Going Down Swinging.

She loves to write for kids as well as adults. Her poems and stories for kids have been published in the School Magazine, Our Home is Dirt by Sea: Australian Poetry for Australian Kids, Stories for Nine Year Olds and other wonderful places. Kids aged 11 plus should enjoy her poetry books The Loyalty of Chickens and The Duties of a Cat, both published by Pitt Street Poetry, as well as her YA novel set in Ancient Greece, The Priestess and the Slave, published by Hadley Rille Books.

Jenny’s most recent poetry prizes are first place in the NEWC Thunderbolt Prize for Crime Poetry 2017 and first place in the Humorous Verse section of the Henry Lawson Awards 2017. She won two prizes in the Scarlet Stiletto Short Story Awards 2016 for a murder mystery set in classical Delphi, with water nymphs. In 2014 she was awarded third in the prestigious ACU Prize for Literature 2014.

Jenny’s degree was in Classics (Greek and Latin) at the University of Newcastle, but she took a twenty-year detour into large mainframe computer networking before she returned to her first love, writing.