WHEN Angela Rega was a little girl growing up in Sydney, every afternoon on her way home from primary school she would drop into the public library at Rockdale or at Arncliffe.

The librarians knew her by name, they’d have books waiting for her by  authors she liked or novels she might enjoy.

“I was always in the library,” says Rega who went on to become a librarian herself.

“I just loved being able to borrow books and get the special privilege of being able to borrow more than the two-book limit. I’d always walk out with about six,” she laughs.

Rega, 50, now living in Canberra, is a fairy tale and fantasy author. 

Her latest work – “The Tale of the Seven Magpies” – has been included in the recently published “South of the Sun: Australian Fairy Tales for the 21st Century”.

“It’s an anthology of Australian fairy tales,” Rega says.

“I sent in my story and it was accepted.”

By day, Rega is a high school languages teacher. Come night she moonlights as an author, working on her stories from the comfort of her Harrison home, in Canberra’s north, where she lives with her partner, his children and the couple’s two cats.

Her short story, “The Tale of the Seven Magpies”, is about a woman who wishes for a daughter and a Magpie Queen who makes her wish come true.

“The story is inspired by the German fairy tale ‘The Seven Ravens’,” Rega says.

“When I was thinking about writing it, a magpie came and sat on the balcony ledge and warbled at me and then the story just came to me.”

The stories in this anthology are definitely not for children, they are strictly for grown-ups.

Often dark, the stories visit places where things don’t always end happily ever after, where a single decision can haunt you forever. 

But there are also tales to make you laugh out loud.

Fairy tales, Rega says, offer an escape from reality.

“There’s magic and wonder in fairy tales, but you can also make your way out of the dark,” Rega says.

“Fairy tales were not originally written for children, they were written for everyone. It wasn’t until the Victorians came along that they turned them into children’s stories, they watered them down and made them less dangerous.”

For years, writing was a private pursuit for Rega.

“I’ve always written but it wasn’t until I was 38 that I decided to put my stories out for public scrutiny,” she says.

“I decided not to be scared anymore, I wanted to put my stories out there and not keep them to myself.”

Since then she’s had about 26 of her short stories published in Australia, Canada, the US, the UK and Norway. 

An Aurealis and Norma K. Hemming Award finalist and runner up of the Overland Neilma Sidney Short Story Prize, Rega says her passion for writing first took root in primary school.

Everywhere, she saw new worlds eager to be built and new characters waiting to be formed.

“I used to love filling up exercise books with stories, nobody read them, I just wrote them for myself,” she says.

Finding inspiration for her stories from the adventure books she enthusiastically consumed in her youth, Rega was also intrigued by Sicilian folklore, fairy tales and fables.

“I grew up in a migrant household where the only sport was storytelling,” Rega says.

“My nonna, who was Sicillian, couldn’t read or write so she told us stories.

“Nonna’s stories were grounded in a world where reality and magic, love and horror, tragedy and humour all intertwined. There were no boundaries – a story could have it all. I guess my writing has always been like that, too.”

In what Rega describes as her “more adventurous days” she lived in Chile and taught English.

But for now the Gungahlin College teacher is happy to call Canberra home and is working on her first novel.

“I’m turning a fairy tale novella I had published in 2013 into a full-length novel,” Rega says.

“For anyone thinking about having a go at writing a fairy tale, look back at when you were a child and think about the story that moved you the most, ask yourself why and then go for it.” 

“South of the Sun – Australian Fairy Tales for the 21st Century”, $35, from serenitypress.org. A Kindle version is $9.99 from amazon.com.au