SHINY AWARDY THINGS

My shiniest writing career moments include:

• Getting to read The Truck Cat (with Danny Snell) to millions of kids (and grown-ups) everywhere as the selected book for National Simultaneous Storytime 2025. How fun. What an honour. And so mind-blowing seeing all the creative ways schools, libraries and kindergartens celebrated, explored and extended the story.

• The Truck Cat getting recognised with a bunch of stickers in 2025: including the CBCA Picture Book of the Year Award and the CBCA Shadow Judging Picture Book of the Year Award, an ABIA win and a shortlist in the Patricia Wrightson Prize for Children's Literature as part of the NSW Literary Awards.

• Naturopolis collecting some stickers in 2023: CBCA Shortlist (New Illustrator) and Notable (Eve Pownall Award), as well as Gold in the international Nautilus Book Awards.

• Winning first place in the 2022 CYA Competition for my super-silly manuscript, The Boy with the Hair (which then became a bona fide real book, Boldilocks, through EK Books.).

• In 2020, I was awarded an Australian Society of Authors Award Mentorship. I opened the notification email and had to run downstairs from my office job hyperventilating, because maybe it meant I could actually do this writing thing, for real.

• But as cool as all of the above is… it’s probably all eclipsed by that moment at some point in primary school, when I first got to read out my story to the class … and I realised that my words could make other people feel things. (How amazing!)