Monica Hughes was a popular award winning Canadian writer who published more than 30 books in her relatively short career. She is considered to be Canada’s best writer of science fiction for children and the first science fiction writer for young adults in Canada. She was the first Canadian to be awarded the Phoenix Award, which she won for the Isis Trilogy, and she received the prestigious Canada Council Children’s Literature Award (now known as the 
Governor General’s Award) twice for Hunter in the Dark and The Guardian of Isis. She also won the Canadian Library Association’s Young Adult Book award for the former. However, Monica Hughes’ road to success was a bumpy one that was traversed through perseverance, hard work and refusal to give up on her dream.
Monica Hughes was born Monica Ince in Liverpool, England on November 3, 1925. Her mother was a professor of biology and her father was a professor of mathematics. Shortly after her birth, Monica’s father was offered a position at the University of Cairo in Egypt. At first they lived in Heliopolis, a suburb of Cairo, where Monica remembers going for walks with her nanny and younger sister and seeing mirages of palm trees and buildings. After that they moved to Cairo proper where they had a view of the pyramids. Monica visited the pyramids but collected bottle caps with her sister while her parents climbed them. I suppose she had yet to develop her interest in history and science fiction. She also remembers seeing lizards, birds of prey and endless sand. These strange surroundings likely inspired the terrains and sandstorm scenes in The Keeper of the Isis Light.
When Monica turned six years old her family moved back to England. She attended the Notting Hill and Ealing School, which was an alternative school that focused on teaching its pupils about writing as a human process. They studied cuneiform script, pictographic writing from the 30th century BC, and the Rosetta stone. She was only in grade 2 at the time. When Monica turned eleven, her family moved to Edinburgh. While in Edinburgh, Monica’s mother required her to go for long daily walks. Monica would take these “walks” at the Carnegie library in her neighbourhood. It was there she discovered her love for Jules Verne author of Twenty-thousand Leagues Under the Sea and Journey to the Centre of the Earth. Monica’s father read to her and her sister in the evenings from all different kinds of books including astronomy books. Her father was an amateur astronomer and spent a lot of time at the local observatory. He told them that the whole point of an education was to teach you how to look things up for yourself. Monica’s father was a big influence in her life and work and bestowed a love of the sky and a fascination of what lay beyond our solar system.
When the Second World War began Monica and her sister, like many other children, were sent away to school. The first school they went to was a boarding school in rural Scotland. Her book The Seven Magpies, about a girl who is ‘shipped off’ to a boarding school in Scotland while her parents join the war effort, is clearly based on this experience. 
After some time, Monica and her sister moved to a convent school in Harrogate. Monica was encouraged to write by the teachers at this school. The school itself was not far from the birthplace of the Bronte sisters, Charlotte, Emily and Anne, who wrote Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey respectively. Perhaps this historical fact had some effect on her interest in writing.
Upon graduation Monica began an honours mathematics degree at the University of Edinburgh but at age 18 she was old enough to join the Women’s Royal Navy Service and did. Monica was good at nearly everything she studied so, while in the service Monica used her skills to work on breaking the German’s secret code. Monica has said the war gave her an appreciation for life and this is reflected in her writing.
After the war Monica changed her major to meteorology but upon graduation she worked in a dress factory and as a freelance dressmaker for a theatrical costumer. One of her friends at this time convinced Monica to travel to Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and South Africa. This trip added to the already large palette of experiences she drew upon when creating characters and settings for her books.
Following her return to England, Monica decided she wanted to immigrate to Australia but the waiting list to travel there was three years long. So, in April of 1952 Monica Ince decided to immigrate to Canada on the way to Australia. Her plan was to make her way to the West Coast and catch a boat from there but she never made it past Edmonton. She started her new life in Ottawa where she got a job as a lab technician testing the components of the CF-100 jet fighter for the National Research Council of Canada. She was very lonely and began a writing class at the YMCA because she found she was talking to herself. Through a friend she met at writing class she met Glen Hughes whom she married in 1957.
Glen’s job took them to Cornwall, Toronto, London and finally to Edmonton in 1964. Of the trip across the Prairies Monica said “you have to use your eyes and mind to see the beauty”. This was the landscape that inspired her to write Earthdark. While raising her family, Monica wrote many short stories and a few novels for adults but nothing was ever published. Monica joked that she had more rejection letters than you would believe. She and Glen had four children, two girls and two boys, but Monica continued to write in the evenings. However, it wasn’t until her youngest son began school in 1971 that Monica began writing full time.
Monica found a book about how to write children’s books at her local library and subsequently found her calling. She sent her first manuscript to a publisher who asked her to write a different book. It wasn’t exactly an ideal start to her career but it was a start. In her first ten years of professional writing Monica Hughes published sixteen books.
Although Monica is most famous for her Science Fiction books she also wrote Canadian colonial historical fiction such as Gold Fever Trail, A Klondike Adventure, books about race relations in Canada such as Log Jam and The Ghost Dance Caper, and Fantasy like the Sandwriter series and Where Have you Been Billy Boy?.
Monica’s goal was to explore the story of man and to ask if there was anything out there and to share the fact that she can’t find the answer. In her teen novels Monica Hughes explores some of the crises of young adulthood but she tries to respect the reality of young people’s lives by creating believable characters that her readers can identify with. 
Olwen the protagonist of the Isis Trilogy is coming to terms with the realization that her body has been adapted to the climate of Isis and she is no longer recognizably human. In Log Jam Isaac is a teen on the run from a detention centre when he meets Lenora who is running away too. In the Invitation to The Game teenagers are being exported into an addictive game by adults in order to create a Utopian world. The underlying theme that seems to come out in all of Monica Hughes’ books is that an individual can and should make a difference.
Unlike many writers Monica Hughes enjoyed speaking at schools and libraries. During these talks for children and young adults, Monica talked candidly of her journey to become a professional writer. She told her fans “writing requires more organization and discipline than other jobs”. Monica Hughes encouraged her young admirers to follow their dreams but warned that realizing your dreams can be very hard work. She said, “Once I made the decision to work at it every day it all fell into place”.
In 2003 Monica Hughes passed away from a stroke at the age of 77, but her stories live on beloved by the children and young adults whose imaginations she continues to open to the possibilities of our world and beyond.
Bibliography
Arts Canada. (2003). Sci-Fi writer Monica Hughes dead at 77. Retrieved March 8, 2009 from http://www.cbc.ca/arts/story/2003/03/10/hughes100303.html
Buchanan, A. et al. (1987). Canadians all 7: Portraits of our people. Agincourt, Ontario: Methuen Publications.
Hughes, M. (1978). The ghost dance caper. Don Mills, Ontario: Thomas Nelson & Sons.
Hughes, M. (1990). Invitation to the game. Toronto: HarperCollins Publishing.
Hughes, M. (1980). The keeper of the Isis light. Toronto, Tundra Books.
Hughes, M. (1987). Log jam. Toronto: Stoddart Publishing.
Hughes, M. (2002). The Maze. Toronto: Harper Trophy Canada.
Hughes, M. (1989) The Promise. Toronto: Stoddart Publishing.
Hughes, M. (1996). The Seven Magpies. Toronto: HarperCollins Publishing.
Hughes, M. (2000). Stormwarning. Toronto: HarperCollins Publishing.
Hughes, M. (1998). The story box. Toronto: HarperCollins Publishing.
Hughes, M. (1995). Where have you been Billy boy? Toronto: HarperCollins Publishing.
Johanson, P. (2003). SF Canada Obituary – Monica Hughes. Retrieved March 8, 2009 from www.sfcanada.ca/winter2003/hughes.htm
Stableford, B. (2007). Monica Hughes. Salem Press for EBSCO Publishing. Retrieved March 21, 2009 from Novelist K-8.
Stroyman, M. (producer) & Dorsey, C.J. (writer). (1985). Monica Hughes. Toronto: Mead Educational services.
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