On Sunday 28 May twelve Tasmanian children’s book creators met in the faded glory of the Overflow Room at The Hope & Anchor, Australia’s oldest extant pub. Our speaker was Coral Tulloch, a prolific and much celebrated veteran of our industry.
Coral’s first book was published in the late 70s. Since then she has worked on 60 books for children, in fiction and non-fiction, for trade and educational publishers, in Australia and Internationally.She studied Fine Art at East Sydney Technical College, Animation at Randwick Technical College, drawing in Florence, Italy and lithography at The Academy of Applied Arts, Prague, Czech Republic and still calls Tasmania home. She has worked in newspapers, advertising, film, theatre and magazine production, but her main focus and love has always been children’s literature.
In 1999, she was awarded an Arts Fellowship with the Australian Antarctic Division. She has returned to Antarctica several times on tourist ships as artist-in-residence, and has produced many works from these voyages south. Antarctica, The Heart Of The World, (ABC Books) won the Environment Award for Children’s Literature in 2004, and was named one of the 10 best Science Books in the USA. Sydney of the Antarctic remains a much loved book and her collaborative book with Alison Lester, One Small Island, (Penguin Books) won four awards in 2012, including the Eve Pownall Information Book of the Year,(CBCA) and The Environment Award for Children’s Literature. The Journey, one of her favourite books, (Walker Books)(2013, also inspired by Antarctica, is an eclectic mix of games, maps, puzzles, recipes and story. Her latest book, Phasmid, was CSIRO’s first children’s title (2015) and in 2016 won honour book CBCA, shortlisted for the Environment Award and won the Whitley Commendation. She is currently working on 2 fiction titles and three non fiction titles.
Julie Hunt and Tania Walker, imbibing information from Coral’s talk.
SCBWI TAS BRAINSTORMING SESSION TO COME – WATCH THIS SPACE
Having seen how effective SCBWI has been in kickstarting and furthering the careers of children’s book creators in other states, Coral is keen to help out with a forthcoming brainstorming session on future directions for SCBWI Tasmania. This session is being planned for late August.
TAS SCBWI members, watch this space for more details, or email Anne Morgan on morganataswa@gmail and let us know if you are keen to be involved.