Author/Illustrator Lunches
Each day throughout the Congress there will be a number of author/illustrator lunches providing opportunities for you to listen to and interact with some of our very best NZ authors and illustrators of children's literature.
Tuesday Joy Cowley, Lindy Fisher, David Hill
Wednesday Margaret Mahy, Brian Falkner, Kyle Mewburn
Thursday Lynley Dodd, Gavin Bishop, Jill Eggleton
Cost to attend: $20 NZ, $15 US
Gavin Bishop |
Gavin Bishop is one of New Zealand's leading children's authors and illustrators. He has won many national and international awards, including the Grand Prix in the Noma Concours for Children's Picture Book Illustration in Japan 1984, the Sylvia Ashton-Warner Fellowship 2004 and the Margaret Mahy Medal for Services to Children's Literature, 2000. He has won the NZ Children's Book of the Year, the NZ Children's Picture Book of the Year and the Russell Clark Medal for Illustration many times. www.gavinbishop.co.nz Photo: Marti Friedlander |
Joy Cowley |
Joy Cowley is a great-grandmother who has been writing most of her life. She has had over 600 books published, many of these being books for reluctant readers. She believes that we can teach children to read and at the same time, hate reading, if the books they are given are dull and difficult.
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Lynley Dodd |
I have been writing and illustrating picture books for 37 years. Trained in art and an illustrator first, I found the urge to write came only after the publication in 1973 of Eve Sutton's and my My Cat Likes to Hide in Boxes. The ensuing 31 books have been solo efforts. Over nine million copies have sold worldwide to date. The Hairy Maclary series consists of 19 titles, the remaining 13 are an assortment ranging from The Nickle Nackle Tree to The Dudgeon is Coming. A satisfying balance! |
Jill Eggleton |
Jill Eggleton has taught in many schools of varying social and cultural backgrounds throughout New Zealand. For the past 15 years she has been an educational consultant, training teachers internationally in literacy and classroom management. Her passion is to provide resources for teachers and children that will motivate them and excite and enrich their lives. This has led Jill to write for children and she is a published author of several poetry books and over 700 children's books, which are sold internationally. |
Brian Falkner |
A lot of Brian's real life adventures end up in his books, (in fictional disguise of course!) Whether it is an attack by a vicious swarm of wasps, being bullied at school, or skimming the surface of the ocean in a tiny seaplane, Brian loves to use real incidents as the basis for the stories in his books. A recent face-to-face encounter with a deadly king cobra, and a ride on an elephant with a mind of its own, are all lodged away somewhere waiting for the right moment to emerge in a story. He studied computers at university then trained as a journalist. He worked as a reporter and an advertising copywriter, a radio announcer and an Internet developer before finally realising his lifelong dream of being an author. Photo: Thomas Langon |
Lindy Fisher |
Lindy is a fine artist and graphic designer who is still passionate about paint. Combine that with a critical interest in composition and lettering and you have an artist who is meticulous about research, first impressions and lingering detail. Lindy's current motivation is to encourage readers to use their imagination to interpret for themselves through exposure to expressive fine art in picture books. Although inspiration is initially drawn from the text, Lindy endeavours to identify the heart and spirit of the message to render in pictorial form rather than merely replicate the script. Recent sophisticated picture books include: |
David Hill |
David Hill lives in New Plymouth, in NZ's North Island, and has been a fulltime writer for over 25 years. His fiction and non-fiction for adults is published in numerous magazines, anthologies, and on radio. He is the author of 30-plus books for children and young adults, which have been published in ten languages across some fifteen countries. He has won awards in NZ, the US, the UK, France and Germany. He always hopes that his next book will be his best, and while he's writing it, usually fears it will be his worst.
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Margaret Mahy |
Margaret Mahy was born in Whakatane in 1936 so is now (qute cheerfully) aged seventy three. She loved the stories she was told as a small child and began writing stories of her own when she was seven years old. She persisted with writing, getting poems and stories printed in children's columns in the local newspaper and ,later, in the New Zealand School Journal. School Journal stories were noticed by an American publisher -Franklin Watts - who produced them as picture books and Margaret's life as a published writer began. She was then twenty five years old.
Margaret has now written over two hundred books including very short books for the New Zealand education department, picture books, anthologies and novels. As a child she was reproved for talking too much, but she has been a persistent talker at conferences, and, of course, on the printed page.
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Kyle Mewburn |
I want my stories to waltz across your tongue and dance in your memory. Or, to quote Bill Nagelkerke (Magpies September 2009) - Kyle "uses language, rhythm and rhyme with great verve and expertise." I have eight picture books to my credit (including Kiss! Kiss! Yuck! Yuck! - winner of the 2007 NZ Post award). My latest, Old Hu-hu, is a poignant tale about losing someone dear. My books are published in nine countries. |
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