{"id":176571,"date":"2026-07-30T08:00:25","date_gmt":"2026-07-29T22:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/?p=176571"},"modified":"2026-07-30T08:00:26","modified_gmt":"2026-07-29T22:00:26","slug":"get-to-know-jaclyn-moriarty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/2026\/07\/30\/get-to-know-jaclyn-moriarty\/","title":{"rendered":"Get to know Jaclyn Moriarty"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Get to know our author of our book of the month for August, Jaclyn Moriarty<\/a>. Moriarty is the best-selling author of many novels for children, young adults and adults. She has been the recipient of the NSW Premier\u2019s Literary Award, the Queensland Literary Award, and the Aurealis Award for Fantasy. Her books have been named Boston Globe Honor Books, White Raven selections and Best Books for Young Adults by the American Library Association.\n\nJaclyn grew up in Sydney, Australia with four sisters (including authors Liane and Nicola Moriarty), one brother, two dogs and twelve chickens. She has lived in the US, UK and Canada, but now lives in Sydney again, along with her son, Charlie. She is very fond of chocolate, blueberries and sleep..<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
1. To begin with why don\u2019t you tell us a little bit about yourself \u2013 where were you\nborn? Raised? Schooled? <\/em><\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

I like it when people ask where I was born because I can say that I was born in Perth,\nWestern Australia.  I\u2019m proud of that.  However, the family came back to Sydney when I\nwas two, so my memories of Perth are imaginary\/based on photos.  (I did take a trip\nback with my parents and son a few years ago, and we cycled around Rottnest Island,\nand it was spectacular.)  I grew up in the north-west of Sydney with five sisters, one\nbrother, two dogs, twelve chooks, two horses and a duck. I went to a Catholic Girls\u2019\nHigh School in Pennant Hills and then did English and Law at Sydney University, before\nflying overseas to keep studying in the US and UK.  This was a procrastination\ntechnique to delay becoming a lawyer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. What did you want to be when you were twelve, eighteen and thirty? And why?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

From the age of six my dream was to become an author.  I knew that wasn\u2019t realistic so\nI made different plans.  At twelve, I wanted to be a flight attendant so I could see the\nworld, and an astronaut so I could see\u2026 more of the world.  At eighteen, I wanted to be\nin advertising and make cinema ads.  At thirty, I really wanted to be an author but I was\na lawyer.  My plan was to figure out how to phase out the law.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. What were three works of art \u2013 book or painting or piece of music, etc \u2013 you can\nnow say had a great effect on you and influenced your own development as a\nwriter?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n

Books: The Phoenix and the Carpet by E. Nesbit; To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf; and The Republic of Love by Carol Shields.<\/p>\n\n\n

Music: Chopin Nocturne C sharp minor (no 20) (I don\u2019t know why; it just seemed to break something open in my brain); the Popcorn record by Hot Butter (my dad used to play it very loudly and it was so wild it made everything seem possible!); Placebo\u2019s album, \u2018Without You I\u2019m Nothing\u2019 (listening to it basically wrote my YA novels for me).<\/p>\n\n\n

Art: the illustrations in some of my favourite children\u2019s books, only I can\u2019t remember their titles; Modigliani\u2019s portraits.<\/p>\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Please tell us about your novel (which is also our BOTM!), Time Travel for Beginners.  <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s truly an honour that this is your Book of the Month!  Thank you so much! \nTime Travel for Beginners is the story of a nondescript storefront in a Sydney suburb between a gelato bar and a sushi place.  It calls itself the Time Travel Agency and offers customers short trips to anywhere they like in time\u2014from Ancient Rome to the Swinging Sixties, from their great-grandmother\u2019s kitchen to their own troubled teenage years.  The catch is that nothing they do in the past will alter the present. <\/p>\n\n\n

Anna has just got a job there; Teddy is a customer who wants to time travel and figure out where he went wrong in his marriage;  and Jade, who\u2019s taking writing classes in a room upstairs from the agency, thinks the place is a hoax and wants to burn it down.<\/p>\n\n\n

5. What do you hope people take away with them after reading your work?  <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, I would say that I hope they might find themselves a step closer to leaving their regrets behind and embracing the future; and that they might have a new perspective of the nature of time.  However, that\u2019s too ambitious, so I\u2019ll say I hope they feel cheerful.\u2028\n \n \n <\/p>\n\n\n\n

6. Whom do you most admire in the realm of writing and why?   <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n

My writing sisters, Liane and Nicola Moriarty.  (I love my non-writing sisters too, to be clear.)  I also love Elizabeth Stroud, Kate Atkinson, Anne Tyler, Elizabeth McCracken, Anne Patchett, Laura Bloom, Kathryn Heyman.  My life-long favourites include Virginia Woolf, Tom Stoppard, Dylan Thomas, Emily Dickinson, Jane Austen, E. Nesbit, Arthur Ransome, and Diana Wynne-Jones.  And many more. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

7. What advice do you give aspiring writers?   <\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Remember that all you\u2019re doing is telling a story.   I think it\u2019s easy to get overwhelmed by the advice and tips and rules of writing.  But all you really need to do is let yourself disappear into your story.  At the same time, imagine you\u2019re telling the story to a good friend: you don\u2019t want to bore your friend, or confuse them\u2014you want them right there inside the story with you. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Get to know our author of our book of the month for August, Jaclyn Moriarty. Moriarty is the best-selling author of many novels for children, young adults and adults. She has been the recipient of the NSW Premier\u2019s Literary Award, the Queensland Literary Award, and the Aurealis Award for Fantasy. Her books have been named Boston Globe Honor Books, White Raven selections and Best Books for Young Adults by the American Library Association. Jaclyn grew up in Sydney, Australia with four sisters (including authors Liane and Nicola Moriarty), one brother, two dogs and twelve chickens. She has lived in the US, UK and Canada, but now lives in Sydney again, along with her son, Charlie. She is very fond of chocolate, blueberries and sleep.. 1. To begin with why don\u2019t you tell us a little bit about yourself \u2013 where were you born? Raised? Schooled?  I like it when people ask where I was born because I can say that I was born in Perth, Western Australia.  I\u2019m proud of that.  However, the family came back to Sydney when I was two, so my memories of Perth are imaginary\/based on photos.  (I did take a trip back with my parents…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":73,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[4,92,9,6676,40],"tags":[15122,2615,2674],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176571"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/73"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176571"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176571\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":176590,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176571\/revisions\/176590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}