Merrion Frances “Mem” Fox is an Australian writer of children’s books and an educationalist specializing in literacy. She celebrates her birth date as March 5, 1946, in Melbourne, Australia.

Mem and her two sisters grew up in Africa when their parents became teaching missionaries in Rhodesia (now known as Zimbabwe). Disliking her given legal name, Fox began using her nickname “Mem” at around 13 years of age. Graduating high school, she did volunteer work near Geneva, Switzerland.

She attended drama school for three years where she met Malcolm Fox and they married in 1969 and ended up living in Adelaide, South Australia. They have one daughter, Chloe.

In 1973, she started teaching drama full-time at Sturt’s Teachers University. She then took a course in children’s literature at Flinders University where one of her assignments was to write a children’s book. Her book “Hush the Invisible Mouse,” later changed to “Possum Magic,” was published in 1983. It is now considered a classic in Australian children’s literature and Australia’s bestselling children’s book.

Mem is Australia’s best-known children’s book author. She has been semi-retired since 1996, but still writes and gives seminars and is an advocate for literacy and literature. She is famous for saying, “Books don’t harm kids; they arm them.”

Her book “Possum Magic” sold over one million copies in its first ten years of publication and still in hard-back. At this time, more than five million copies have been sold, and is the best-selling picture book in Australia.

Mem has written more than 45 books for children with her latest Meerkat Mayhem illustrated by Judy Horacek published in November 2024.