News & Events

1. Way, way, way back a long, long, long time ago, I wrote about starting a new junior novel. I didn’t think I would ever finish it, despite spending a wonderful few weeks watching the talented gymnasts at Southside Districts Gymnastics Academy in January 2011,...

1. It occurred to me that so much of writing is waiting: waiting for ideas to come, or the next scene; waiting to see whether publishers like your latest offering; whether readers like it. Writing is, in this sense, the antithesis of modern life, modern communication,...

Happy New Year, dear reader! (You know who you are.) This year is about Writing. Which shouldn’t come as a surprise, coming from a writer, but the last couple of years have been, well, distracting, not to put too fine a point on it. So even though many aspects of my...

1. It is the end of a year of turmoil and upheaval. There has been loss and illness and grief, and pressure-cooker stresses. It has been a year of endings of various kinds. It has been a year of revisiting the past, of trying to find how I got from there to here. This...

1. Sometimes words are not sufficient, even for a writer. Last month, I lost a woman who meant more to me than she could know, although I tried and failed to explain it to her on many occasions. She was my substitute mother, an unjudging ear, my pole star in times of...

On Tuesday I was interviewed on national radio for the first time. I’m not quite sure how it happened: I got a call from the producer of Books and Arts Daily and next thing it’s early in the morning and I’m waiting nervously to go into the ABC studios to talk about YA...

1. Months have passed with no blogging, but lots of day-job, writing gigs and general rushing about. It was with some surprise that I noted the arrival of December: it’s been an awfully long time since I’ve had such a dramatic, intense year. I’ve learned how to shoot...

1. October was the eighth month in the Roman calendar, which seems about right, as it does not seem possible that we’re heading toward the round-up of 2012.  Mind you, so much has changed this year, for better and for worse, that it seems more like the work of eight...

1.  So many people launched fabulous books in July.  I went to the launch of  Meg McKinlay and Kyle Odgers’  new book Ten Tiny Things, which I’d been tantalised by in Rottnest, and James Foley’s In the Lion, which I’d been tantalised by in Singapore.  I adored them...

Oh, I know, it’s been ever such a long time.  But I’ve been busy.   Dianne Wolfer, Naomi Kojima, Yoko Yoshizawa, Leonard S. Marcus, me, James Foley and Norman Jorgensen at Ku  De Ta, Singapore * At the end of May I was lucky enough to visit Singapore to present...