The Presenters

This page tells you all about the people who are going to be talking, showing you stuff, getting you to write stuff and answering all your questions during the Festival.

Where their name appears in pink, you can click on it to get to their website. Here you’ll find all sorts of extra information about them and their books.

Teachers will be interested to know that some of them - like Elaine Forrestal and Mark Greenwood - also have teaching notes on their websites.

Gabby Barrett

Gabby Barrett is an English teacher at Shenton College, and works with students who are on the Academic Talent Program (ATP).

Gabby will be bringing along some very talented Year 10 students - including Nic Dyer and Poppy Damon - and together they will explain how to write a good essay - a skill that everyone needs to have well under their belt before high school.

Nic Dyer is an ex-Rosalie student and now one of the top ATP students. He has won numerous awards, including a Subiaco History Award, and came second in the National Science Awards for his short film on Newton’s Theory of Relativity. Nic has recently been commissioned to write a non-fiction piece for an anthology to be published later this year.

Poppy Damon is another ATP student and has won a Subiaco History Award, the National Trust award for writing, and a Health Department award for writing.

Wendy Binks

Wendy Binks, author and illustrator of award winning children’s book Where’s Stripey? has been working as a potter and artist for over 23 years.

She is best known for her quirky illustrations of emus and other Australian animals, which appear all over her pottery, giftware, paintings and other art.

Her second children’s book, Scrambled Egg, has resulted in an international following that encompasses both children and adults alike.

Wendy’s full range can be viewed at her gallery in Fremantle Markets.

At the Rosalie Festival, Wendy will be reading one of her books, talking about Australian animals and how she made her books, drawing quick pictures on an easel, and showing emu eggs, feathers, and samples of her art.

David Caddy

David Caddy is a primary school teacher who writes madly in the school holidays. He is married to Liz and the kids are Ben, Meg, Dan and Joe. David likes people with three letter names.

David wrote his first book Whammy, then followed it with Smash and then Whacko. Somewhere along the way was The Bear Collection and Sabotage in Tales from Two Islands. His latest book is Pope Max. He also writes hundreds of school reports but prefers the fiction.

Whacko was the winner of a 2001 WAYBRA Award, the Younger Readers’ Hoffman Award for the highest ranked book by an Australian author.

David writes books that deal with children’s misunderstandings of the world and the humourous situations they find themselves in.

He has conducted hundreds of author/writing sessions and has talked to thousands of school children. ‘This is the real joy of writing children’s books’, he says.

Jon Doust

“Jon Doust has been many things in his life, including a baby, a small boy, a naughty boy, a larger boy, a much larger boy, a huge gigantic monstrous boy with broccoli growing out of his ears, then a much smaller boy again, and, finally, where he is now, which is still sort of boyish.

“Jon has never won an award for anything he has ever done, but once lived on chocolate for a month. He only began writing books because Ken Spillman said he could.”

Jon is one of the funniest men alive, who also manages to infuse his work with a touching warmth. Well known at Rosalie for the Serventy Kids books, written with Ken Spillman, he and Ken are currently working on a graphic novel with James Foley.

Jon and James’s Festival presentations will discuss the progress of the novel and invite Rosalie students to offer their advice. Jon will also be hosting the closing event on Thursday 22nd.

Jamie Edis

Jamie Edis has an impressive background in visual media - this means TV, computer games, animation and illustration. Have a look at the website that features computer games designed and created by Jamie and his brother: ezone.com. Jamie’s role at ezone also includes sound effects creator and character voice actor.

As if that weren’t enough talent for one person, he has recently launched his first picture book, Have You Ever Heard a Giraffe Laugh?

Jamie will be explaining to the Pre-Primary students how he created his book, using a multi-media presentation and games.

James Foley

“James has been drawing ever since he realised crayons were a drawing implement and not a food group. He made this discovery last week and his ability has improved remarkably.”

James Foley has one of the best jobs in the world. He spends his days drawing cartoons, illustrations and caricatures, and sometimes doing serious stuff like designing people’s websites.

He recently graduated from the University of Notre Dame, Fremantle, where he contributed a comic strip called ‘Quasi’ to the student newspaper, Quasimodo.

“He misses the idyllic hours spent drawing while he was suposed to be paying attention… although now he now works part-time in the public service, so not much has changed.”

Many of you will already be familiar with his work because he draws the cover illustration for the Quokka newspaper each week.

At the Festival, James will be joining in with Jon Doust to explain all about their new graphic novel.

Elaine Forrestal

Elaine Forrestal is a West Australian author whose work has been published in Australia, the UK and America. She also has a strong connection with Rosalie, because her mum, dad, and various aunts, uncles and cousins went there.

Her novels, The Watching Lake, Someone Like Me, Straggler’s Reef, Graffiti on the Fence, Leaving No Footprints, and Winning, are for 9 to 15 year olds.

A Glassful of Giggles and Rainbow Jackets are collections of short stories for reading or telling to children aged from zero to 8 and for emerging readers to tackle on their own.

Her new picture book, Miss Llewellyn-Jones, is a romp through the West Australian countryside with a surprise at the end.

Now a full time writer, Elaine used to be a teacher and has had many years of experience presenting literature to children in classrooms.

Vivienne Glance

Vivienne Glance’s poetry and short stories have appeared in journals (Colloquy, TEXT, Indigo, Blue Dog), anthologies (The Weighing of the Heart, Open Boat Barbed Wire Sky) and other publications.

She has won places and commendations in competitions (C J Dennis Literary Award, Split Ink, Southern Cross Literary Award, Bauhinia Literary Award), and won the WA Heat of the 2007 National Poetry Slam, coming third in the National Final.

Vivienne regularly performs her poetry at readings and slams, and runs a workshop for writers who want to read or perform their writing. She recently performed at the Night Words Festival in the Sydney Opera House Studio, and her writing for theatre has been performed in Perth, Sydney, Seattle, London and Edinburgh.

She is also a professional actor and theatre director.

Vivienne will run poetry workshops with Afeif Ismail Abdelrazig at the Rosalie Writers Festival.

Mark Greenwood

Mark Greenwood is an author with a passion for Australian history.

Well known to Rosalie are The Legend of Moondyne Joe and The Legend of Lasseter’s Reef, which aim to encourage an appreciation of Australia’s unique myths and legends. Both books have won the West Australian Premier’s Award for children’s books.

Fortuyn’s Ghost tells the haunting story of an ill-fated Dutch East India ship, while Magic Boomerang, Outback Adventure and Our Big Island were prompted by an interest in multicultural literature and the unique way illustrated books can help children to understand of other cultures and perspectives.

Mark’s latest release, Simpson and His Donkey, illustrated by Frane Lessac, will be the focus of his Festival presentations.

Geoff Havel

Geoff Havel was born in the mountains of New Guinea. As a baby he liked to sit in a sand pit on the edge of the jungle, scoffing bananas.

He likes to think his manners have improved since then. Now he likes surfing, fixing up old cars and, of course, writing stories.

He has been a primary school teacher for 21 years and thinks that is why his stories are for children. His wife says he just never grew up. Geoff’s latest book, Babies Bite, won the 2005 Hoffman Award.

Simon Haynes

Simon Haynes is known for his four Hal Spacejock novels.

“Everyone knows someone like Hal - he’s the guy who plugs a 12-volt lantern into a mains socket and burns his house down. He’s the guy who does his own plumbing and floods the neighbour’s house. He’s the guy who visits three stores to save a few bucks on a hammer, then blows a hundred and twenty on a laser-guided tape measure with built-in bottle opener.”

Simon divides his time between writing fiction and computer software, with the occasional round of golf thrown in for a laugh. His goal is to write fifteen Hal Spacejock books before someone takes his keyboard away.

Simon’s talks work best with Year 7-9s, so he’ll be working with our Year 7s to explain how he writes his science fiction novels - taking their imaginations ‘out of this world’.

Julie Hosking

Julie Hosking is the editor of Scoop, Western Australia’s famous lifestyle magazine.

She has been working as a newspaper and magazine journalist for more years than she cares to remember, and has written and edited everything from business reports to travel articles, television scripts to newspaper stories.

Julie enjoys working on a magazine that is all about WA, but what she loves most is the people she meets through her job.

She’s had a few encounters with celebrities over the years. But she finds the so-called “ordinary people” in our community far more interesting.

WA is full of inspiring individuals with wonderful tales to tell, whether it’s swimming with whale sharks or starting a global health empire from the kitchen sink. As a writer and editor, Julie’s challenge is to turn the facts into a compelling story.

Julie will be explaining to the students how to conduct and write a magazine interview, and welcomes questions about journalism as a future career choice.

Afeif Ismail Abdelrazig

Afeif Ismail Abdelrazig was born in Elhassahisa, Sudan in 1962. A published poet writer, playwright, artist and human-rights activist, he arrived in Australia in 2003.

Afeif’s plays (in Arabic), published in Sudan between 1986 and 2000, include The Race, Doors, The Merchant, Starvation and The Centre of the Circle.

He was short-listed for the inaugural Kit Denton Fellowship for Writers of Courage in 2007, for which he submitted his plays The Son of the Sun, The Maze and The Shrouds or the Dead.

Afeif has published many works of poetry in English, Japanese and German: Traps and Some Tracks in 2001, Bet of the Argil in 2003, A Passage to the Aroma of Invisibility in 2006, and It’s your Bird in 2007.

He will be running poetry workshops at the Festival with Vivienne Glance.

Norm Jorgensen

Norm Jorgensen was born in Broome way back in the middle of the last century, when it was a place that no one went to, or came from.

His lifelong love affair with books was motivated, like most people his age, by Enid Blyton and The Secret Seven series, given to him by his parents at age 7.

His books include In Flanders Fields, A Fine Mess, The Call of the Osprey, and most recently, Another Fine Mess and Jack’s Island.

Norm says he was never naughty as a child because he was too much of a chicken, and he’s still scared of schoolteachers! But this isn’t going to stop him braving the Writers Festival again.

Joy Lefroy

As Education & Learning Coordinator for the National Trust, Joy Lefroy has a deep interest in Western Australian history and heritage.

Her book, The Pipeline O’Connor Built, tells the story of the Mundaring to Kalgoorlie pipeline designed by Engineer-in-Chief CY O’Connor to carry fresh water from Perth hills to the eastern goldfields - a distance of 560 kilometres. Joy and colleague Diana Frylinck wrote the book to help younger children engage with this important piece of our history.

Joy and her partner and co-author, Mike, will also be presenting The Catalpa Escape, published last year by Fremantle Press - an exciting true story about the escape of six fenian convicts from Fremantle Prison.

Joy and Mike will bring them some of Marion Duke’s amazing original illustrations from the book.

Joy Lefroy doesn’t have a website, but here’s the link to teaching notes on The Pipeline CY O’Connor Built.

Mike Lefroy

Mike Lefroy has a love of history, in particular the history of Western Australia and his home town of Fremantle.

His publications for children include picture books, junior novels, non-fiction titles and education kits.

Mike’s latest publication is a collaboration with his wife, Joy, and illustrator Marion Duke on a picture book, The Catalpa Escape. This book - a work in progress at our last Festival - was shortlisted for the 2006 WA Premiers Book Award in the Children’s Book Category.

Along with Joy, he will use The Catalpa Escape to draw the children back into the mists of 19th century Australia on a daring and dangerous voyage…

Here’s the link to teaching notes on The Catalpa Escape.

Kate McCaffrey

Kate McCaffrey is studying for a Master of Arts in Creative Writing at UWA. Originally from Liverpool, she has lived in Australia since the age of 2 and attended Wanneroo Senior High School. She now lives on 11 acres with her partner, Jason, their two daughters, two dogs, a cat and a rabbit.

Kate will be speaking at our Parents’ Night on Wednesday 21 May about her first novel, Destroying Avalon - an award-winner at the Western Australian Premier’s Book Awards 2006 and the Western Australian Young Reader’s Book Award 2007.

“Avalon’s first day is a disaster and it only gets worse. She immediately finds herself on the wrong side of the popular girls and within days becomes the subject of a vicious cyber bullying campaign…

“Destroying Avalon is about adolescent peer pressure and the search for identity.”

Cyber bullying is a new phenomenon for many parents, and the dark side of writing online. While our Festival will be encouraging students to embrace the potential of writing on the web, enabling them to direct their energies positively, the reality of cyber bullying is something parents need to get their heads around.

Kate’s second novel, In Ecstasy, will be released just in time for the Festival, and tackles similarly challenging issues facing our children today - the ubiquitous drug scene.

As Rosalie students approach high school age, these are issues that none of us can afford to ignore.

The Well Bookshop have generously agreed to supply copies of Destroying Avalon at a discounted price to parents who would like to read the book before hearing Kate speak.

Parents - look out for the order form in your kids’ school bags.

Janet Shaw

Beyond the Red Door is Janet Shaw’s inspiring story of her own life and struggle with eye cancer, which meant living with very limited vision and finally left her totally blind at the age of 33.

Using this crisis as a catalyst, Janet’s determination saw her become a medal-winning Paralympic cyclist and subsequently a successful motivational speaker, blog-writer and soon-to-be children’s author.

Her gorgeous guide dog, Lucy, is the central character in her children’s book, which is on the brink of publication.

At the Rosalie Festival, Janet will encourage the children to write dialogue using Lucy as one of their characters - and no doubt Lucy will contribute with a few tail wags as well.

Julia Sutton

Julia Sutton used to be a Rosalie mum, which already makes her extra special! Even though her youngest, Amy, has now moved on to Shenton College, Julia jumped at the chance to work with our students on blogging.

Blogs take us out of the familiar world of books and magazines, and into the world of the web - fast becoming an essential writing medium for many teenagers and in the workplace.

Julia is a group facilitator and blog coach - and if you don’t know yet what a blog is, have a look at Julia’s Sewing Circle and Lisa Randell’s Frog Pond.

We have a Festival Blog on this site too, and encourage you and your kids to have a go at submitting blog posts and commenting on other people’s posts.

Blogs are also becoming increasingly important as a business communication tool, and are something the students may find themselves applying in many study and work contexts in later life.

At the Festival, Julia will explain the basics and encourage an imaginative and constructive approach to blogging. In the meantime, Lisa will be encouraging students to submit writing for the Festival Blog.

George White

George White writes plays and musicals. His musical plays for children include Nokey Joe and the Monster Fish, The Lemmings are Coming, The Gargoyles, Arbistark and the Fassnahs, Flight of the Brolgajira, Gobbledegooks, Queen of the Bees, Capriccio, Cabbages and Kings, Icarus-Flight to the Sun and River of Gold.

George will once again be working with a class of students on script-writing and production before the Festival to prepare a dramatic presentation.