I have wanted to be a writer forever, it just took me a long time to figure it out. It all started at age three, when I had my first poem published in the children's pages of the local paper....

More than forty years later:
One day I came home - without wild riches and a little dejected - after competing in 'Who Wants to be a Millionaire,' which I had been, sadly, trying to get on for the last two years. I needed a new goal – preferably one that didn't involve a TV game show. For a long time I had known I wanted to do something creative, but what? Serendipitously, a friend had just enrolled in a children's writing course; I decided to put my name down as well and have never looked back.

I live with my family in Auckland and have been writing for children since 2004. I have had a number of stories, poems, plays and readers published by educational publishers in New Zealand, Australia and the United States. My lucky break came in 2008 when Mt Eden illustrator, Brian Lovelock, put forward my text for "The Rain Train" to Walker Books in Australia.

Published List

The Rain Train (illustrated by Brian Lovelock) – Walker Books Australia, 2010
Ophelia Wild, Secret Spy (illustrated by Tracy Duncan) – Walker Books Australia, February 2012
Ophelia Wild, Deadly Detective (illustrated by Tracy Duncan) - Walker Books Australia 2014
The Name at the End of the Ladder - Walker Books Australia 2014

Awards

1st - Auckland City Libraries Poetry Competition 2008
NZSA Mentor programme 2009/2010
1st - The Manawatu (New Zealand) International Poetry for Performance Competition 2010
The Rain Train – finalist CJ Korean 3rd Picture Book Awards 2010
2010 Todd New Writers' Bursary – towards writing a collection of children's poems. Thanks to Creative New Zealand and the Todd Corporation Ltd.
The Rain Train - Storylines Notable Picture Book 2011 Ophelia Wild, Deadly Detective - Storylines Notable Book 2015
The Name at the End of the Ladder - Storylines Notable Book 2015

Articles

Biography printable version