Sydenham High girls get lesson in writing and life from author Gemma Malley

If the girls of year 7 at Sydenham High School want to become authors they should think seriously about first taking a job with a financial magazine.

That was the advice of popular teenage fiction author Gemma Malley, who visited the school this week to talk to the year 7 students about how she became an author and the inspiration behind her successful series of dystopian tales set in the future.

The author of seven successful titles, including The Declaration and The Killables, started her career working for a pensions magazine and found the disciplines of learning a topic from scratch, working to a brief and keeping to deadlines a great training ground for when she eventually set about her own writing.

She also revealed that although she was not a science student at school, she has become fascinated by all things scientific as they now play a major role in her storylines.

Gemma answered questions from the girls and then signed copies of her books.
The latest of her books – The Disappearances – has just been published and the girls were lucky enough to be given a reading by the author herself during the session, held in the school’s Westwood Theatre.