About me

I’m an award-winning author of books for all ages. I’ve spoken in schools and libraries across south-east Queensland and Wide Bay and at festivals across Australia and internationally.

I love to focus on inspirational workshops and talks that encourage creativity and firmly believe that all of us have stories inside us just itching to be told. I love getting kids excited about writing stories! I love to teach basic author tricks for getting a story to grow and overcoming the roadblocks we face when trying to get a story onto the page. I am happy to tailor presentations and talks to a particular school need.

I prefer hour long sessions but I’m happy to fit in with the school timetable. I can present up to four sessions in a day.

Previous session topics have included:

Story seeds

A fun-filled session about growing a story from a tiny seed of any idea. We focus on “character” and “problem” seeds and start to brainstorm ideas for wonderful stories. I show how a story can grow from the simplest of ideas.

How to grow a hero

What are the traits of a hero? All my stories feature them! I love teaching kids about how authors bring their protagonist or hero to life as well as discussing all the stages of the hero’s journey.

How to bake a story cake

A fun interactive session on the basics of great story writing – a hook, characters, setting, problems and creating tension.

Magical Mapreading: A session on Creativity

We’re all explorers when we start to write a story. This session looks at some different ways to develop stories. In groups or individually students will map out a new world and watch their story ideas grow.

Character Creation

How do authors bring characters to life? What tricks do they use that have readers believing and barracking for these fictional creations? This fun session has children building characters from scratch and watching them sprout histories, dreams and emotions.

The Power of Words 

How is writing stories important? What can it do for us? Writing stories helped me understand myself when I was kid and still does to this day. This session looks at writing powerful narrative pieces by using emotions. Students get messy and creative bringing an object to life with words from their hearts.