Meet the Author: Zanni L Arnot (aka Zanni Louise)

 Alison McCaffrey talks to author Zanni L Arnot about her debut YA novel.

Zanni is a multi-award-winning author, who has published more than 40 books for children over the past 10 years, spanning the gamut of ages from picture books for young children, early readers, young chapter books and middle grade fiction (written as Zanni Louise). This year marks the release of Zanni’s first young adult novel, A Guide to Falling Off the Map. Zanni and her family recently relocated to Europe, but she’s committed to continue writing Australian landscapes and Australian characters.

Thank you for taking the time to speak with StoryLinks, Zanni.

What is the first book or story that you remember writing for yourself? The first thing that wasn’t a school assignment or something you were told to write.

I very clearly remember, because my dad had brought home a typewriter and I had just learned to write. I was in kindergarten. It was sitting on his desk and I remember how exciting it was to put in a piece of paper and start typing stories. And they were, about, a significant paragraph long. I’d put them in a folder, and I’d march them into school. They were very silly, kind of a bit Roald Dahl-y in their vibe. I also wrote my autobiography when I was six. It’s a 14-page handwritten novel with illustrations, and it details facts, things like my brother hitting me over the head with a guitar, which it’s possible didn’t happen.

You’ve written extensively in the picture book genre, lots of early readers and early chapter books. How did you find the transition from those young children’s books up to middle grade and now to young adult?

Well, I think they provided the building blocks. And particularly teaching for the Australian Writer’s Centre, teaching picture books and teaching my own classes. It’s like the same fundamental principles of story no matter what you’re writing. So in a way, picture books are the best training because they’re the most refined, distilled version of the story structure. Being able to clarify your ideas in a really precise way is very useful, so I just expand the word count. But it’s more about tapping into the age of the characters now. And for some reason I am able to move around the different age groups in a way that feels authentic to me. As soon as something doesn’t feel authentic to me, I just can’t do it. I think my confidence has grown with my word count, and with the age of my kids, and with my years being in publishing. My trust in my abilities, my trust in my writing style and the trust in my voice. Because every time I have written something kind of just for me, something I have written out of pleasure, I’ve had the best success with it. I’m learning to trust that.

As your daughters have grown older and your writing has transitioned to older readers, do you see your daughters reflected more in your books and in your writing?

I think their view of the world. Both of them are contemporary kids in the fact they’ve got their fingers on the pulse, they know what’s going on in the world. I’m very aware of how different their contemporary life is from mine. I’m always toeing the line between the authenticity and truth for me and my childhood, and me now as a person, and what it is now for my kids, which is very different. They live in a different world, there’s a lot more awareness. There’s a lot more tolerance in their friendship groups, and I’m definitely tapping in to that more open-minded end of the population. And more in just the way they see the world. It’s kind of mind-blowing; teenagers are incredible humans. They just have this incredible awareness. These are girls who’ve grown up in pretty safe, loving households so I guess they’ve had the opportunity to thrive in a contemporary society and it’s a privilege and an honour to be a fly on their wall.

In A Guide to Falling Off the Map, Vinnie and Lilah have that really fast falling out. Do you remember, personally, how intense all those emotions were as a teenager, or are you paying more attention to draw on and reflect on how your girls and their friends are dealing with that sort of thing?

Those emotions are coming from myself more than anything. I guess I’ve always been pretty emotionally sensitive, like I’m aware of my emotions and I’ve always been able to journal and talk about them. I used to do that a lot as a teen. And I had psychologists. I was always talking about myself and my friendships and my emotions. Definitely something I’ve tapped in to. And particularly with friendships, I went to a girls’ boarding school, so I sort of lived and breathed girl friendships and it was always intense.

Your portrayal of Vinnie’s grief is done very respectfully but it is still quite raw. You’ve really hit that avoidance, the waves with which it comes, and the depth with which it hits. What was your process in determining how to map that?

I guess my approach with this realism writing, or contemporary realism, is just to write. To get into the frame of mind of the characters as much as possible, to get into the shoes of the character and really just feel their experiences as closely as I can. Just write in a bit of a vacuum where you aren’t the character, but as close as possible become the character for the duration of the writing. The characters both formed quite quickly, so I was able to just go into their viewpoint and into their experience and sort of stay in it as much as possible. I’ve definitely had grief experiences in my life; I lost my best friend when I was 20 and that was just tragic. I think about her every day. But it’s not all that conscious, to be honest. It’s pretty much an instinctual thing. And once it was written there were sensitivity readers, and experts who came in. I didn’t change anything in terms of the grief stuff, and I didn’t change anything in terms of the character’s expression of her grief, so that always felt really true to form. Although you do have to be responsible and aware.

Writing that dual perspective, did you find one or the other an easier character to write as?

Surprisingly not. They’re very different. And that’s kind of how they appeared right from the beginning – in their difference. It’s the difference that makes the relationship work. But, no. It was just funny. As soon as I was in Roo, I was in Roo. As soon as I was in Vinnie, I was in Vinnie. I guess because each of their characters was quite distinctive it was easy to slip between them.

Was it really different writing as Roo, as a boy, compared to your natural voice as a woman, and having daughters? Was it a difficult first step to take to get into that headspace of a teenage boy?

Not at all, no not at all. I don’t know why. It’s the only boy’s perspective I’ve ever written, but it was almost the easiest perspective I’ve ever written. His voice just came really naturally. I really loved him from the beginning. His reasons for his decisions felt very genuine to him, so I just trusted him and went with it. I don’t think I ever much thought about gender whilst I was writing. The only thing I felt conscious of, maybe later, was I’m not a teenage boy, and I’ve never been a teenage boy, and I’m sure they probably have some considerable thoughts that I’m not aware of. I went to a girls’ school so I’m pretty innocent, and I did have brothers, but I didn’t really grow up alongside them in those teenage years. So even though I found it easy I don’t know how representative Roo’s voice is of an actual teenage boy, so we’ll see. Maybe there’s boys out there who feel like that.

Roo and his mum are living on that poverty line. And in Queenie in Seven Moves they were dealing with the housing crisis and accommodation issues and finances, and sort of toeing the poverty line. I remember reading an interview that you and your family were a little bit displaced housing-wise for a while. Is a lot of that from your experience, or have you gone to other people, other families, to get their perspective on dealing with those things as well?

I think I am drawing a bit from my own experience. Certainly with Queenie directly, that was all very much from personal experience. But our region around Byron Bay is a region of extremes. You’ve got houses worth $64M, and on the other hand you’ve got extreme poverty; kids who are experiencing neglect and lots of issues. And then of course [after COVID] they’ve gone through the floods, and there’s still a lot of families displaced and in poverty. For about five or so years, I was out at all of the regional schools on a regular basis with StoryBoard, a program set up by Jesse Blackadder through Byron Writer’s Festival, and it was a remarkable program. One of its objectives was to reach disadvantaged kids. These kids have never seen an author, and they’ve often never read a book, and they’ve never written a paragraph. Sometimes there were six kids in the school, and you were there with them for 3-5 hours, and having tea with the teachers. So having beautiful conversations with these families and these kids you definitely get an insight. I was quite taken aback time and time again; the literacy rates are really low in a lot of these places, and it’s really quite alarming, and the neglect is visible in some of these places, but these kids are just gorgeous. So, not that I’m drawing on that consciously, but I suppose I’m very aware of the disadvantage in parts of Australia.

You’ve got another book coming out next year. Is this next book dealing with any of these heavier, contemporary, and really relevant topics as well?

Maybe less of the sort of socioeconomic stuff, more of the personal, because right at the beginning of the story her best friend dies in a car accident, and that’s drawing on my direct experience. I guess it’s a personal story that I’ve lived with, and I was going through some grief myself when I wrote it. A different grief, but I was writing to process grief, and losing my friend at that age was one of the most significant things that has ever happened to me. But you’re also on the cusp of change and so it’s such an interesting point of your life, when you’re branching out into adulthood. The character’s just left school, so it’s a slightly different age group, but it’s certainly for the same kind of root issue.

You’re working on something else now. Are you still writing as an Australian based writer, in terms of where your characters are and where everything takes place, or are you branching out now that you and your family are overseas?

Yeah, well definitely the characters always have to be Australian, and they have to start in Australia in some way. Because that’s who I am, so I feel it would be a disservice to try and write an American character or an English character. But I can write as an Australian character going to a place, and that’s what I’ve done. And that’s what I’m doing now, as well. She starts in Brisbane, she ends up going to Montana, where I spent some time. I do want to harness the global locations as well, because it is fun to read about. And I love to read about books set in other places. But I definitely will always continue to write Australian landscapes as that’s very important to me.

Finally, what is your favourite book that you’ve written, and why?

This one [A Guide to Falling Off the Map], definitely. I read all my books, but this is one, every time I read back on it, I just want to read it again. And I don’t have that with books all that often, I’m a very fussy reader. There are very few books that I would just go and read again, so the fact that I want to read this again is a great joy to me. And I just love the characters so much. I love their friendship, and I love their connection to one another, and I love the landscape. And those landscapes are really significant to me. And I hope it’s a bit joyful.

Look insde A Guide to Falling Off the Map

Lothian Children’s Books 2025

Zanni Louise

Alison McCaffrey began her writing career at the age of 7. It was short-lived, but she’s been working on a comeback writing for children and young adults in more recent years. She enjoys Brisbane summers and doesn’t miss Canadian winters. Her passions include days outside with her family, reading aloud to her three young kids, and discovering new and inspiring books reading for herself before bed.