Cirrus@Austlit

Edel Wignell, the youngest of six daughters, grew up on a sheep farm outside Echuca Victoria. She attended a rural school of fourteen pupils for eight years, then travelled by bus to Echuca High School until she had completed Matriculation (Year 12). At the age of 17, she left home and entered a three-year teacher training course at Toorak Teachers College, Melbourne. Wignell taught in city and country primary schools in Victoria and in England for eight years.

Wignell gave up teaching to try some of the arts: drawing, painting and gold and silversmithing. Gradually writing took over, and from 1979 she wrote full time for adults and children. Wignell published over 90 children's books - fiction, non-fiction and picturebooks - as well as a television serial and dozens of magazine articles, stories, verse and scripts (print and digital). In addition to her fiction-writing for children, Edel Wignell wrote extensively in the non-fiction and information book fields as well as readers in series for primary school students. She was one of six contributing authors to the Macmillan Australia Children's Encyclopedia. In 2011, Wignell was writing for a range of publications, including websites, and living in the foothills of the Dandenong Ranges. In 2013, she gifted her writing earnings and copyright to the Australian Society of Authors, which funded a number of outputs includeing the annual Edel Wignell Mentorship (ceased 2018).