Fleur Beale is the author of many award-winning books for children and young adults - she has now had more than 40 books published in New Zealand, as well as being published in the United States and England. Beale is the only writer to have twice won the Storylines Gaelyn Gordon Award for a Much-Loved Book: with Slide the Corner in 2007, and I Am Not Esther in 2009.

She won the Esther Glen Award for distinguished contribution to children's literature for Juno Of Taris in the 2009 LIANZA Children's Book Awards. Fierce September won the YA category in the 2011 NZ Post Children's Book Awards and the LIANZA Young Adult Award in 2011.

In 2012 she won the Margaret Mahy Medal for her outstanding contribution to children's writing, and in 2015 she was awarded the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to literature. In 1999, Beale was Dunedin College of Education's Writer in Residence. A former high-school teacher, Beale lives in Wellington.