Struggle Down Under

Shannon Gilligan wrote her first Choose Your Own Adventure book, The Search for Champ, in 1983. She has written over fifteen books for children, including eleven in the Choose Your Own Adventure series. Her work has been translated into twenty languages and there are over 10 million copies of her books in print. In 1990, she was in the last generation of developers who were drafted into the legendary Evangelism program at Apple Computer that reached out to non-computer people to design and develop software. Gilligan spent a decade in the '90s working on story-based computer games and her creativity tool—Comic Creator—from Hearst New Media won Best Software from People Magazine in 1995. Her contributions to video game design are featured throughout the Strong Museum of Play in Rochester, New York. Gilligan’s current day job is publisher at Chooseco LLC, a purpose-built company for the relaunch of the famous children’s gamebook series. She lives in Warren, Vermont, still writes when she can, and travels widely.