I’m co-hosting an exciting workshop at Clunes Booktown Festival…

I’m excited to be back at Clunes this year! If you’re an aspiring author of children’s fiction, and gaining an understanding of how to navigate the path to publication is on your 2025 bucket list, head to Clunes Booktown Festival and make that tick!

Alongside award-winning authors Andrea Rowe and Emma Bowd, I’m co-facilitating a workshop that delivers insights into the different (and unique) routes to trade publication. We’ll be covering all KidLit readerships from board books, picture books, junior fiction, middle grade through to young adult works.

You’ll benefit from our shared experiences of navigating publishing pathways – from slush submissions to pitching, marketing, and networking, offering an honest and educational ‘peek behind the curtain’ of submissions and acceptance.

We’re going to have a whole lot of fun along the way, and you’ll ramp up the equipment in your writer’s toolkit with an in-house exercise that will change the way you think about yourself as a writer, and take home resources you’ll turn and return to as you look to the future with a professional and positive mindset.

Booking details are here: https://tickets.clunesbooktown.com.au/Events/Pathways-to-Children-s-Publishing

Signed books will be available all weekend from the wonderful Readings who have been a proud part of Melbourne’s literary landscape since the first store opened in Carlton in 1969.

Come for the day, or stay for the whole weekend! Clunes Booktown Festival is the most wonderful way to indulge your love of books browsing the extensive array of independent booksellers while attending author talks, panels and workshops, all set against a town straight out of a story setting: historic Clunes set in a valley surrounded by extinct volcanoes where echoes of our Gold Rush days can be heard down it’s architecturally-exciting streets!

Yay! I’m headed to Clunes Booktown Festival…

Are you headed to Clunes Booktown Festival this weekend? Come and say ‘G’day’! I’ll be buzzing around all weekend from Friday through to Monday morning.

I’m excited (and completely honoured) to be chairing a panel with Alice Pung, Tony Birch and Maxine Beneba Clarke (Joanna Murray-Smith had a clash of scheduling with a film project). We’ll be discussing ‘What makes a good story and how to keep the next generation reading’.

The panel sold out a while ago, but you can find me the rest of the weekend at the trade tables with some of my fellow Peninsula Writers’ Club crew. Come find us in the Service Street Precinct. We’ll be selling and signing, and generally soaking up the Clunes vibe. ❤