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 […]

Shannon Osrin of RTR FM interviewed me and other creatives for this radio segment on inspiration – check it out! How to: Find Inspiration

Am thrilled to be able to share here a 3-minute podcast of me reading from At my door, my latest book. It’s for readers aged from 7 to 11. Hope you like it! https://www.fremantlepress.com.au/c/classroom-express/4642-deb-fitzpatrick-read-a-long

Look at these faces. These are the faces of the inspired, hard-working writers and illustrators I’ll have the pleasure of chatting with on stage at this year’s Perth Writers Festival. It’s a tough gig, it really is. I hope to see you there! It’s this weekend (18–21 February 2016) at UWA’s Crawley campus. The events […]