You can listen to the episode below, on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or add the podcast RSS feed manually to your favourite podcast app.  

Links mentioned in this episode

• Buy So You Want to be a Writer – the book!
• Facebook group for So You Want to be a Writer

Writer in residence: Bec Nanayakkara

Bec is a children's author and, having spent twelve years supporting student learning and wellbeing, she is certain that the best way to teach anything is with a good story. Bec lives in the New England region of New South Wales with her husband and five children. She spends her days being inspired by ordinary, everyday pieces of life and her nights trying to weave that inspiration into picture book manuscripts.

Follow Bec on Instagram.

Follow Affirm Press on Twitter and Instagram.

You can listen to the episode below, on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or add the podcast RSS feed manually to your favourite podcast app.  

Links mentioned in this episode

• FOCUS ON… Avoiding Infringement
• WIN The Oxenbridge King by Christine Paice
• Buy So You Want to be a Writer – the book!
• Facebook group for So You Want to be a Writer

Writer in residence: Sandie Docker 

Australian author, Sandie Docker grew up in Coffs Harbour, and first fell in love with reading when her father introduced her to fantasy books as a teenager. Her love of Women’s Fiction began when she first read Jane Austen for the HSC, but it wasn’t until she was taking a translation course at university that her Mandarin lecturer suggested she might have a knack for writing – a seed of an idea that sat quietly in the back of her mind while she lived overseas and travelled the world.

Now back in Sydney, Sandie writes about love, loss, family and small country towns. Her debut novel, The Kookaburra Creek Café, was released in 2018, The Cottage At Rosella Cove in 2019, the German edition of The Kookaburra Creek Cafe – Das kleine Café der großen Träume, was released in Jan, 2020, The Banksia Bay Beach Shack in 202O, The Wattle Island Book Club in 2021 and The Redgum River Retreat in 2023. Her new novel, The Lyrebird Lake Ladies Choir, will be released in June 2024. Sandie is also the founder and director of The Northern Beaches Readers Festival.

Follow Sandie on Instagram.

Follow Penguin Books Aus on Twitter and Instagram.

You can listen to the episode below, on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or add the podcast RSS feed manually to your favourite podcast app.  

Links mentioned in this episode

• Buy So You Want to be a Writer – the book!
• Facebook group for So You Want to be a Writer

Writer in residence: Cassy Polimeni

Cassy Polimeni is a freelance editor and the author of The Garden at the End of the World (picture book, UQP) and Ella and the Frogs (junior fiction series, UWAP). Her past jobs include editor of Destinations Australia magazine, TV book reviewer and airport chauffeur. She won Just Write for Kids Pitch It! Competition in 2020, and in 2022 was awarded an Australian Society of Authors/Copyright Australia Mentorship to develop a middle grade novel. Cassy has presented story times and workshops at kindergartens, libraries and festivals. She volunteers with the Author Pen Pals program, and is a Literacy Ambassador for education charity Ardoch. Cassy lives on Bunorong country.

Follow Cassy on Twitter and Instagram.

Follow UWA Publishing on Twitter and Instagram.

You can listen to the episode below, on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or add the podcast RSS feed manually to your favourite podcast app.  

Links mentioned in this episode

• FOCUS ON… Avoiding Infringement
• WIN Girl Falling by Hayley Scrivenor
• Buy So You Want to be a Writer – the book!
• Facebook group for So You Want to be a Writer

Writer in residence: Louise Southerden

Louise Southerden is a surfer, writer, and former editor of SurfGirl magazine. She is the author of Japan: A Working Holiday Guide; Surf’s Up: The Girl’s Guide to Surfing; and Adventures on Earth. Having lived the surfing lifestyle for more than 12 years and ridden waves all over Australia as well as overseas, she is now based on Sydney’s northern beaches, where she divides her time between her laptop and the waves.

Follow Louise on Twitter.

Follow Hardie Grant Books on Instagram.

You can listen to the episode below, on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or add the podcast RSS feed manually to your favourite podcast app.  

Links mentioned in this episode

• Buy So You Want to be a Writer – the book!
• Facebook group for So You Want to be a Writer

Writer in residence: Carla Fitzgerald

Carla Fitzgerald is a children's author, a recovered lawyer and mum of three, from Sydney. She studied English literature and law at university and worked at the Australian Human Rights Commission.

Her favourite things to do are write, walk, read, eat, and hang out with her family. Not necessarily in that order. She also has a weakness for donuts and reality TV. And despite numerous attempts, she has not yet broken a world record.

Carla is a tutor with the Australian Writers Centre, a Books in Homes Role Model and a Coach with the Harding Miller Education Foundation.

Follow Carla on Instagram.

Follow UQPBooks on Twitter and Instagram.

You can listen to the episode below, on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or add the podcast RSS feed manually to your favourite podcast app.  

Links mentioned in this episode

• WIN The Girl With The Violin, The Death of Dora Black, and The Echoes
• Buy So You Want to be a Writer – the book!
• Facebook group for So You Want to be a Writer

Writer in residence: Kate Forsyth 

Dr Kate Forsyth is an award-winning author, poet, and storyteller. Her most recent books are Psykhe, a new telling of the classic myth, Kate Forsyth’s Long-Lost Fairy Tales, a collection of lost fairy tales from around the world, and The Crimson Thread, a reimagining of ‘The Minotaur in the Labyrinth’ myth, set in Crete during the Nazi invasion and occupation of World War II.

Kate’s other historical novels include The Blue Rose, set during the French Revolution and the first British embassy to Imperial China; Beauty in Thorns, a reimagining of ‘Sleeping Beauty’ told in the voices of four women of the Pre-Raphaelite circle of artists and poets; The Wild Girl, the story of the forbidden romance behind the Grimm brothers’ fairy tales which was named Most Memorable Love Story of 2013; and Bitter Greens, a retelling of ‘Rapunzel’ which won the 2015 American Library Association award for Best Historical Fiction.

Kate’s non-fiction books include Searching for Charlotte: The Fascinating Story of Australia’s First Children’s Author, co-written with her sister Belinda Murrell, with the assistance of the Nancy Keesing Fellowship. It was longlisted for the 2021 Readings Non-Fiction Prize. Her collection of essays, The Rebirth of Rapunzel: A Mythic Biography of the Maiden in the Tower, won the William Atheling Jr Award for Criticism in 2017. 

Kate has also written books for children, including the Long-Lost Fairy-Tales collection, illustrated by Lorena Carrington. The first in the series, Vasilisa the Wise & Other Tales of Brave Young Women, won a silver medal in the 2018 US Readers Favorite Book awards. Other titles in the series are The Buried Moon & Other Tales of Bright Young Women; Snow White, Rose Red & Other Tales of Kind Young Women; and The Gardener’s Son & the Golden Bird & Other Tales of Gentle Young Men.

Kate has a Doctorate of Creative Arts in fairy tale studies, and is also an accredited master storyteller with the Australian Guild of Storytellers. She has taught writing retreats in Australia, Fiji, Greece, and the United Kingdom. 

Follow Kate on Twitter and Instagram.

Follow Penguin Books Aus on Twitter and Instagram.

You can listen to the episode below, on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or add the podcast RSS feed manually to your favourite podcast app.  

Links mentioned in this episode

• Buy So You Want to be a Writer – the book!
• Facebook group for So You Want to be a Writer

Writer in residence: Deborah Frenkel

Deborah is a Sydney-born, Melbourne-based writer who lives in an extremely messy but happy house full of books and half-painted walls. When she's not writing for kids, she's usually copywriting for TV commercials, billboards, and the labels of shampoo bottles. If she wasn't a writer, she'd probably be an engineer, having spent her childhood (and some of her adulthood) making machines out of toilet rolls and string. Fairies and ferries are equally magical to her.

Follow Deborah on Twitter and Instagram.

Follow Hardie Grant Children's Publishing on Twitter and Instagram.

Follow Affirm Press on Twitter and Instagram.

You can listen to the episode below, on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or add the podcast RSS feed manually to your favourite podcast app.  

Links mentioned in this episode

• FREE EVENT with Kate Forsyth and Valerie Khoo: 5 Essential Lessons to Learn from Genre Fiction
• WIN Precipice by Robert Harris
• Buy So You Want to be a Writer – the book!
• Facebook group for So You Want to be a Writer

Writer in residence: J.P. Pomare

J.P. Pomare is the best selling author of seven novels, most recently 17 Years Later. He is also the author of a number of Audible Original crime thrillers. Several of J.P.'s novels have optioned for film and TV, with In The Clearing (The Clearing) already adapted as a mini series for Disney+ and Hulu. The Last Guests (Watching You) is currently under production for Stan Australia.

J.P.'s work has been published in a number of territories including the US, UK and Australia.

J.P. is a proud Māori (Ngāpuhi). He grew up in Aotearoa but currently resides with his family in Melbourne.

Follow J.P. on Instagram.

Follow Hachette Australia Books on Twitter and Instagram.

You can listen to the episode below, on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or add the podcast RSS feed manually to your favourite podcast app.  

Links mentioned in this episode

• Buy So You Want to be a Writer – the book!
• Facebook group for So You Want to be a Writer

Writer in residence: Lian Tanner

Lian Tanner 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. Nowadays she lives by the beach in southern Tasmania.

Follow Lian on Instagram.

Follow Allen & Unwin on Twitter and Instagram.

You can listen to the episode below, on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or add the podcast RSS feed manually to your favourite podcast app.  

Links mentioned in this episode

• WIN The Wilds by Sarah Pearse
• Buy So You Want to be a Writer – the book!
• Facebook group for So You Want to be a Writer

Writer in residence: Julie Bennett

Formerly a journalist, Julie became a public relations consultant in 2004 and a published author in 2022. Her first novel, The Understudy, was published by Simon & Schuster Australia in 2022. Her second novel, The Lost Letters of Rose Carey, was also published by Simon & Schuster Australia, in 2024.

Both these novels were inspired by her experiences on stage as a child extra in the newly-opened Sydney Opera House and her love of Australian history.

Julie is currently working on her third novel, another Australian historical mystery set in the fabulous 1960s.

She currently lives in the beautiful city of Sydney with her husband, Bruce and their kelpie cross dog, Riley, within walking distance of the Sydney Opera House. They enjoy the theatre, movies, e-biking, and road-tripping. They also love visiting libraries, book stores and book clubs around Australia.

Follow Julie on Instagram.

Follow Simon & Schuster AU on Twitter and Instagram.