As a child, I often pictured myself in khaki, ranging through the Australian bush helping to protect our native animals. I’d hold the little creatures tenderly, measure them, note their sex, check for pregnancy in females, record the data, and then kindly, lovingly, release them back into the world. Well I would have. I would […]

When The Spectacular Spencer Gray came out last month, I knew I had to get in touch with an old colleague. I wanted to ask the young filmmaker who made the book trailer for The Amazing Spencer Gray to turn her hand to the task again, this time for Spectacular. The result? Well, today the book trailer […]

Early reviews for The Spectacular Spencer Gray are coming in and it’s hard not to be delighted. I’m including a few snippets here for those interested. Thank you to readers and reviewers alike and I look forward to seeing quite a few of you, along with your wonderful librarians and teachers, during Children’s Book Week! […]

Last year I had the enormous pleasure of meeting up with my favourite high school teacher ever – my English teacher from Year 12. It had been nearly 30 years since I sat, entranced, in her classroom at a suburban state high school in Perth. I was running creative writing workshops at another WA high […]

Families really fascinate me. So much of my writing, looking back on it, has been about family. Family teaches, controls, contains, cushions, protects, lures and repels us — all at the same time. It nurtures and carves us, in all the best, and sometimes the worst, ways. As a parent, I am very aware of […]

2016 has been a very big year. I haven’t posted here as often as I’d have liked to, and I’m sorry for that. Big 2016 = crazy-busy + beautiful-wonderful + tumultuous-difficult, and I know I’m not the only one to come careering down the hill towards a new year feeling a combination of exhausted, relieved and […]

I’m so excited to share this! Star Bright Books, based in Massachusetts in the US, will be releasing The Amazing Spencer Gray this ‘fall’, and here’s the cover … The blurb reads like this: Spencer Gray is 12—finally old enough to join his father in his glider, the Drifter. Going up and soaring is amazing! Spencer […]

I’ve just returned from an inspiring week in the Pilbara – and, frankly, it was the kids inspiring me most of the time. The Literature Centre and I ran creative writing workshops at high schools in Port Hedland and Newman, and after school we met the amazing Follow the Dream students. The honesty and effort these kids showed in their writing […]

I had a lovely week this week thanks to two schools, their staff and awesome students. On Wednesday I spent the day at Carmel School, working with Year 7, 9 and 11 students. I was so warmly greeted by staff, and then had the pleasure of talking with inquisitive, engaged students – as a writer-in-residence, […]

The other day I came across this old photo of me walking the Bibbulmun Track in the mid-1990s. It’s in this part of the world, along this beautiful walking trail, that I set 90 packets of instant noodles. This is where 15-year-old Joel goes to live, alone, for three months, in a run-down wooden shack. It’s […]