Author Nominee: Austria

Lene Mayer-Skumanz
Austria, Author

The daughter of an actor, Lene Mayer-Skumanz was born in Vienna in 1939. She studied German literature and ancient philology, and subsequently worked as an editor for the children's magazine, Weite Welt. She still lives in Vienna and works as a freelance author.

She wrote her first book in response to the claim that there was no sophisticated religious literature for children; this was Ein Engel für Monika [An angel for Monica], which was published in 1965, and which won the Austrian Children's Book Award. Since then she has produced an extensive collection of books for young people of all ages, ranging from picturebooks to poetry to detective stories and retellings of legends, biblical and historical tales.

Her main preoccupation, however, still lies with religious stories. She employs a style that avoids moralising or dogma; it is direct and uses humour to make a point. She has written about Saint Francis of Assisi, and in her biographies of Mary and Mary Magdalene her perspective on the life and work of Jesus Christ is coloured by female experience. Christa Ellbogen comments that Lene Mayer-Skumanz has the gift of penetrating the God-human relationship and 'candidly and with fresh spontaneousness [she] brings up issues of faith and thereby illuminates hidden religious dimensions to life'.

Mayer-Skumanz has also written historical fiction and biographies for children, including a life of Frederic Chopin, Meinhard II who united the Tyrol, and Mrs Ava, a medieval widow and poet and the first woman to translate biblical stories into the old German language.

She carries out extensive research for her stories, and in her writing is informed by a respect for social justice and the fair treatment of members of different cultures and religions. She has been awarded the Catholic Children's Book Award and the Catholic Book Award of the USA and Canada, and her books have been translated into several languages. In 2000 she was awarded the Order of St Gregory by the Vatican in recognition of her overall literary contribution.