Imagination, perseverance and constantly building skills and understanding of the world of books. These themes – and lots of fun – were at the heart of the Winter Workshop hosted by SCBWI South Australia on June 21, the 2025 Winter Solstice in the southern hemisphere.
As a new SCBWI member said on the day: ‘This is such a welcoming group.’
So it was fitting our Winter Workshop took place in the Blackwood Library, known as Tiwu Kumangka in the indigenous Kaurna language – Kumangka meaning ‘coming together’ while Tiwu are the yellow-tailed black cockatoos which inhabit this place in the Adelaide Hills.
The day began with illustrators and authors sharing their work in a critique group before presentations by author and illustrator Tania McCartney, artist and illustrator Alice Lindstrom and author Alina Bellchambers.
Each offered insights into how they shape and hone their crafts.
Poet and author Kristin Martin introduced award winning author and illustrator Tania McCartney. Tania revealed her passion for every element of books, from writing, editing, illustrating, design and promotion. As she said, ‘If you love something, you get better at it.’
As an illustrator, Tania founded the 52-Week Illustration Challenge, which helped thousands of people, including herself, to polish their illustration skills. Tania acknowledged the time-consuming task of illustrating by hand was reduced dramatically as she adapted to digital illustration, while always seeking inspiration from photographs, the natural shapes of things like leaves and twigs, and the value of charts and graphs to communicate effectively with readers.
Her creative process included progressing from concept to storyboarding and roughs on paper before being digitised, to finals and typesetting. Creating characters like her travelling penguin Plume revealed attention to detail in considering why a penguin would choose to travel, and how. And books like her Wildlife Compendium of the World (Hardie Grant Explore 2023) involved months of research as well as writing and illustrating the book. A promotion tip? Make illustrations of your stories into shop window decals.
Author and illustrator Danny Snell introduced artist/illustrator Alice Lindstrom. It was timely that Alice is also illustrator of the soon-to-be-launched book by local author and SCBWI member Katrina Germein – Another Year Around the Sun (Affirm Press 2025)
Alice outlined her long and winding road from a child who loved to draw to the world of theatre design, art gallery curation and oil painting to book illustration. As Alice acknowledged, the creative career path is often tenuous and non-linear. Travel in Europe and her growing love of paper collage, paper cut, folk art and art history built her skills, while connecting with an artist’s agency opened the door to both creativity and work.
She highlighted imagination and skill in everything from a fairy-tale design on a cup and saucer to jigsaw puzzles, wall murals on Victoria’s Metro and ‘Google Doodle’ artwork on Google’s home page. Alice revealed the painstaking work and patience in harnessing a surgical scalpel to cut out illustrations for a spectacular book about Shakespeare’s plays, A Stage Full of Shakespeare’s Stories by Angela McAllister published by Quatro Kids.
Every illustration involved paper collage characters and backgrounds, layered together to shape scenes from each play.
SCBWI member David Lewis introduced the day’s final outstanding presenter, author Alina Bellchambers. In conversation with award-winning author Adam Cece, Alina explained how she developed her thrilling fantasy novel, The Order of Masks (Pan MacMillan 2024) and her writing journey.
Initially Alina wrote her debut novel from a third person point of view with one protagonist. She then rewrote the book in first person with two protagonists. Her degree in psychology also helped develop her ‘fierce female protagonists, morally grey characters’ and the ‘seductive court politics’ weaved into her novel. Central to her approach was creating high stakes for the characters by posing constant dilemmas and difficult choices. Writing countless stories from her early childhood in a family bookshop to contacting some 200 literary agents before success and publication reflected her grit and determination.
Alina revealed the sequel to her novel, The Weight of Crowns will be launched later this year.
And Mike Lucas, local award winning author and co-owner of nearby Shakespeare’s Bookshop was there as a SCBWI member and to sell books by the wonderful presenters.
Thank you so much to Tania McCartney, Alice Lindstrom and Alina Bellchambers for sharing their stories, and thank you to everyone who helped make this another SCBWI South Australia winner for our creative community.
Next up is our SCBWI SA Professional Day in September. You are always welcome.
David Lewis