Maura Pierlot
Fragments: Journeys from Isolation to Connection
Big Ideas Press, 2021
I feel like I'm a piece, a fragment that's missing all the good bits, but I don't know where to find the rest ... the parts I need to work properly. I bet they wouldn't fit anyway. (Lexy, age 17)
Eight young people navigating high school and beyond, each struggling to hold on - to family, to friends, to a piece of themselves. Perhaps you know them. The bubbly girl who keeps telling you she's okay. The high achiever who's suddenly so intense. The young teen obsessed with social media. The boy challenged by communication. Every single day they, and others, are working hard to keep it together. So hard, they don't see their friends are struggling, too. Through eight imagined stories, Fragments moves from a place of disconnection to connectedness.
The action of Fragments takes place in the minds and hearts of an ordinary group of young people. Their stories encompass anxiety, depression, neurodivergence, gender dysphoria, social media, bullying, family dysfunction, cross-cultural diversity and more, culminating in a sense of hope. Although set in Australia, their stories could take place anywhere.
Ages 13+
“‘Fragments’ by Canberra-based playwright, Maura Pierlot, is a powerful set of stories about young people struggling with emotional, social, physical and mental issues during their teenage years. Eight inter-connected monologues give us a deep insight into the personal lives of these people. It’s disturbing, revealing and ultimately quite moving.”
About the Author
Maura Pierlot has been reading and writing stories for as long as she can remember. She pretends to be an adult but secretly she’s still a teenager inside; maybe that’s why she enjoys writing for children and young adults. She also loves turning her mind to ‘big ideas,’ not surprising for someone with a PhD in philosophy.
Inspired by her music-loving children, Maura’s first picture book, The Trouble in Tune Town, won the 2018 ACT Writing and Publishing Awards and several overseas honours. Her children’s poems have been published in The Caterpillar and various anthologies, and her essays, memoir and poetry appear in Cicerone Journal and anthologies including These Tiny Threads Remind Me (The Written in the Time of COVID-19 Anthology) and Branch & Root (The Anthology of the Trees). Maura’s debut professional theatre work, Fragments played to sell-out crowds at The Street Theatre, Canberra in 2019, and she has received funding from artsACT to produce a digital adaptation of the work in 2021. Besides writing full-time, Maura visits schools and libraries as a guest reader and speaker, and is a regular reviewer and interviewer for CBCA’s Reading Time.
