Bren MacDibble (née McGregor; born 1966) is a New Zealand-born writer of children's and young adult books based in Australia. Bren also writes under the name Cally Black.[1] She uses the alias to distinguish between books written for younger children (under the name Bren MacDibble) and books written for young adults (under the name Cally Black).[2]
MacDibble was born in Whanganui, New Zealand. She was raised on farms around the central North Island of New Zealand.[3][4] Bren lived in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia for 20 years and now lives on the midwest coast of Western Australia.[5]
In 2015, Bren won the Ampersand Prize with Hardie Grant Egmont for her first trade novel In the Dark Spaces. This was quickly followed by her first children's trade novel How to Bee with Allen & Unwin.[4] Both books won New Zealand Book Awards in 2018. The first time any author has picked up awards in two different categories in the same year.[6] How to Bee picked up a Children's Book Council of Australia (CBCA) Book of the Year - Younger readers that same year.[7]
In 2018, Bren was awarded a Neilma Sidney Literary Travel Fund to research her children's novel The Dog Runner.[1]
