In 1973 Margaret Hollingsworth had her first play staged in Canada by Vancouver's New Play Centre, a group which, since its inception in 1970, has had as its mandate the fostering of original scripts by local playwrights. Although she has created almost a dozen scripts since then, it is only recently that her work is being mounted by mainstream theaters. As she understands it, the difficulty for artistic directors has been that her work does not come easily off the page--while rooted in practical realism, it has a surreal quality.

Born in Sheffield, England, the only child of George and Nellie Potts Hollingsworth, Margaret ret Hollingsworth grew up in London and took her training as a librarian at Loughborough College. She traveled and worked in Italy and Japan before immigrating to Canada in 1968. Arriving in Canada, she settled at Thunder Bay, Ontario, and spent four years there as chief librarian...