Alma Margaret Mathers, born in Manawatū, grew up in Mangakino, a small township founded to serve a hydro-electric power station in the North Island of New Zealand.
[citation needed] Her best-known work is The Rivers of China, featuring the short story writer Katherine Mansfield, which premiered at the Sydney Theatre Company in 1987.
It won the Premier's Award in both NSW and Victoria, and is included by the Australian Society of Authors in its list of Australia's 200 best literary works.
[3] In Belonging: Australian Playwrighting in the 20th Century, critic John McCallum describes The Woman in the Window, featuring the poet Anna Akhmatova, as her masterpiece.
The Woman in the Window is included, along with Summer of the Seventeenth Doll from Australia, in Lucy Kerbel's 100 Great Plays for Women.