In 1965, Jill Marshall was born in a Manchester suburb, known mostly for being the place Mick Hucknall of Simply Red hails from. The first in her family to go to university, Jill read History at Cambridge University, from where she entered a career in HR and Training & Development.
Aged 34, as a single mum and T&D director in a multi-national telecoms company, she took another Masters’ Degree, this time in creative writing, and embarked on a career as an author. At the same time, she moved daughter and dog to New Zealand.
Following her first book deal in 2004, Jill’s middle-grade series about sensational girl spy, Jane Blonde, published by Macmillan Children’s Books UK, has sold hundreds of thousands of copies around the world, featured as a World Book Day title and reached the UK Times Top 10 for all fiction.
15 Jill Marshall titles have been published by Macmillan Children’s Books, Penguin Random House and Hachette, and others independently under Jill’s own publishing company in 22 countries, 11 languages and paperback, ebook and audio formats.
Jill has now brought Jane together with her other series in this age group – Doghead, The Legend of Matilda Peppercorn, Stein & Frank – in a new ensemble series. The SWAGG team and their first book, SPOOK, are available now, and Jill is about to write the next SWAGG title, School of ICE. All 16 SWAGG books (SWAGG and the origin series) are available for binge-reading.
As well as books for tweens and teens, Jill writes for young adults and adults, each with a collection of three stand-alone novels, and for younger children, with a Hachette-published picture book for teenies, Kave-Tina Rox.
When she’s not writing books, Jill works as an organisational communications consultant and is a proud mum and nana. She divides her time between the UK and New Zealand, and hopes one day to travel between the two by SatiSPI, ESPIdrilles or Jack BC Zip.