Alyssa Bermudez
Alyssa conducts workshops for primary aged children, and will workshop secondary students in 'behind the scenes' illustration and graphic novels.
Alyssa Bermudez (she/her) is an author, illustrator, and art teacher. She studied illustration and animation in New York at the Fashion Institute of Technology for undergraduate and graduate courses. She strives to put the KA-POW into stories and learning, while representing children of diverse backgrounds. Big Apple Diaries is her debut graphic novel. Her illustrations can be found on fabric and fashion, in magazines, many children’s books and even on stage!
Alyssa conducts comics workshops for primary aged children and will workshop secondary students in 'behind the scenes' illustration and graphic novel writing.
Christina Booth
Christina is the award-winning, internationally published author and illustrator of over twenty-five books for children, including those illustrated for other creators. She believes stories are our superpower and loves telling stories and helping others find the storyteller inside them.
Christina creates picture books: humorous titles for younger children; stories that focus on the environment and endangered species; and stories about relationships and community.
She is currently working on a middle grade novel.
Kip, Welcome Home, One Careless Night, and Are These Hen’s Eggs? Are among Christina’s award winning titles, including a CBCA Honour Book Award and numerous notables, The Environmental Award for Children’s Literature, the RZS of NSW Whitley Award, and shortlisted for The Prime Minister’s Literary Awards.
Christina is available for writing or visual narrative school workshops in person or via Zoom when distance is an issue.
Emily Conolan
Emily Conolan is a teacher, creative facilitator, activist and author. Drawing on her deep knowledge and love of storytelling, Emily brings together techniques from a range of disciplines to engage students in a personal and creative process of transformation. She has worked extensively with the refugee and asylum seeker communities as an English teacher, a cultural arts worker, and a coordinator of an award-winning support program for asylum seekers in detention. She has published three novels in the Freedom Finders series that explore migration journeys throughout the ages. She gets excited about helping people access their own creative energy to bring deeper connection and meaning to their lives.
Types of books Emily has published includes interactive fiction, migration stories and upper primary fiction.
Daniel Gray-Barnett
Daniel Gray-Barnett lives in the Huon Valley, Tasmania with his husband, German shorthaired pointers and chickens.
Self-taught, he studied Medical Science at the University of Sydney before swapping his microscope for pencils when he realised illustration had a much lower patient mortality rate. His picture book Grandma Z won the Children’s Book Council of Australia award for Best New Illustrator and chosen for the International Youth Library’s White Ravens. Come Over to My House is a 2023 Early Childhood BOTY Notable.
Daniel likes working with primary school students and small groups of secondary students who are interested in illustration workshops.
Narelda Joy
Narelda Joy is an award winning children’s book author, illustrator, & book designer. Her books include Tassie Rhymes for little tigers, Reginald’s Christmas, Fox and Moonbeam, and Message in a Sock, which won the 2019 US Northern Lights Book Award, & was shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s History Awards, & the West Australian Young Readers’ Book Awards.
Narelda’s illustrations are highly textural, including collage & 3D works, in many mediums. She is passionate about the power of children’s books, & believes in encouraging creativity in the young, through talks and workshops in schools from K to 12. Narelda also makes puppets, models, characters, garments, and theatrical hats. Her website & blog show a variety of her work.
Fiona Levings
Fiona is a mother and geologist who writes and illustrates picture books from her home in southern Tasmania. Living in a beautiful, far-flung place, Fiona seeks to capture the wonder of the world around her to share with a wider audience.
Fiona’s first book, The Moonbow was inspired directly by the beauty (and fickleness) of the Tasmanian landscape; her second, Now and Then, captures a piece of local history. Now and Then is a Notable book in the Eve Pownall category of the 2020 CBCA Awards.
Fiona’s work is aimed primarily at lower-to-middle-primary aged children.
Anne Morgan
Dr Anne Morgan’s first STEM picture book, The Way of the Weedy Seadragon (CSIRO), illustrated by Lois Bury, was judged a CBCA Notable Book for the 2022 Eve Pownall Awards, and won a Whitley Award for the Best Children’s Natural History Book 2021. Anne's other published children’s books include the Captain Clawbeak junior novels (Penguin Random House), and The Smallest Carbon Footprint in the Land & Other Ecotales, which won the Environment Award for Children’s Literature in 2014. Anne is also a national prize-winning poet, with a Master of Education and a PhD in Writing. She is the convenor of SCBWI TAS.
Anne has experience teaching from infant to university level, and is happy to work with any age group. Anne is available for on-line workshops until further notice.
Sally Odgers
Sally Odgers was born in NW Tasmania and still lives there with her husband and multiple dogs. She started writing in the 1970s and now has over 400 titles published.
As well as children’s books, Sally writes Young Adult, crossover, romance, photo verse and how-to books for writers.
Sally enjoys running writing workshops and author talks for all literate ages, reading, walking her dogs and cultivating her websites. In 2018 she received the Alice Award for her long-term contribution to Australian Literature.
Sally writes an entertaining blogspot, focussing on the story behind the story.
Lian Tanner
Lian Tanner has worked as a teacher, a tourist bus driver, a juggler, an editor and a professional actor. She has been dynamited while scuba diving and arrested while busking. She once spent a week in the jungles of Papua New Guinea, hunting for a Japanese soldier left over from the Second World War. It took her a while to realise that all this was preparation for becoming a writer.
Lian’s books include the best-selling The Keepers trilogy, The Hidden series, The Rogues trilogy, A Clue for Clara, Rita’s Revenge, and picture book Ella and the Ocean (illustrated by Jonathan Bentley).
New releases in 2023 are Spellhound, a whimsical fantasy for 7-11 year olds, and When the Lights Went Out (illustrated by Jonathan Bentley).
Lian conducts school workshops for primary and secondary students.
Coral Tulloch
Coral is an author and illustrator of over 60 books for children.
Her picture book Bouncing Back: An Eastern Barred Bandicoot Story was shortlisted for the CBCA Eve Pownall Award (2019) and won the Environment Award for Children’s Literature in 2019. One Small Island, in collaboration with co-writer and co-illustrator Alison Lester, was published in 2019. The story is about the battle to save Macquarie Island from environmental destruction.
Coral’s website and facebook page include free interactive material for primary school children.
Coral will be available in Terms 3 & 4 for small group workshops with Grades 4 to 10. Carol brings her portfolio of manuscripts covering the full publication process. Workshops can be tailored to suit the focus of the classroom.
