About Fragments
Fragments - Journeys from Isolation to Connection
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 publication includes a comprehensive Study Guide, detailing activities and curriculum links for English, Drama/Arts, Health & PE, Civics and more (based on the Australian Curriculum).
Recommended for ages 12 years and above.
About Maura
About Maura
Maura Pierlot is an author and playwright who 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.
In an earlier life, Maura was an ethicist, medical writer/editor/producer and business owner. When she’s not busy thinking, dreaming, laughing or creating – and sometimes even when she is – Maura enjoys spending time with her family at their avocado farm set within a coastal NSW rainforest, a property they share with wombats, echidnas, lyrebirds, kangaroos and two energetic Bordoodle pups.
WHy did she write Fragments?
Rarely presenting as neat packages, mental health issues often involve feelings and behaviours with jagged edges and blurred origins.
Fragments embodies the theme that stress at home, at school and in life is challenging young people beyond their usual coping abilities, leaving them disenfranchised and vulnerable. So much of adolescent life is spent looking inwards that it's perhaps not surprising that mental health issues are often internalised.
I wrote Fragments to start a conversation. It's only when we speak openly about mental health issues - without fear or judgment - that we can chip away at the stigma that prevents many people from seeking help.
It is my hope that the work will find its way into schools in Australia and overseas