Event and Ticketing Details
Dates & Times
Wednesday 1 December
6:30 PM - 7:30 PM
Location
wheelercentre.com
Children’s books provide some of our earliest experiences of the power of storytelling. We learn that we can imagine, create and design the worlds we want to see and live in. So, why do the stories we hear, and the people we get to hear them from, often fit within such a narrow spectrum? How can children’s and young adult publishers in Australia and the UK provide more space for underrepresented writers to thrive and tell their stories?
As part of The Stories We Tell Ourselves project, we’ll hear from Elle McNicol, author of A Kind of Spark; Cath Moore, author of Metal Fish, Falling Snow; Dr Melanie Ramdarshan Bold and Denise Chapman, researchers from the UK and Australia respectively; Aimée Felone, Managing Director of Knights Of; and Marisa Pintado, Publishing Director at Hardie Grant Children’s Publishing. Together, they’ll explore the need for more pathways to inclusion and diversity in children’s and young adult writing and publishing. Hosted by Erin Wamala.
This event will be captioned.
The Stories We Tell Ourselves is presented with Spread the Word and the Melbourne City of Literature Office and supported by the UK/Australia Season Patrons Board, the British Council and the Australian Government as part of the UK/Australia Season.
Featuring
Cath Moore
Cath Moore is an award-winning author, academic and filmmaker whose work has screened on SBS, Channel 7 and ABC TV. For the past 15 years she has taught in the creative writing department of Melbourne University ...
Elle McNicol
Elle McNicoll is a bestselling and award-winning novelist. Her debut, A Kind of Spark, won the Blue Peter Book Award and the Overall Waterstones Children’s Book Prize, as well as Blackwell’s Book of 2020. She is Carnegie nominated, and was shortlisted for the Books Are My Bag Awards 2020, the Branford Boase Award and The Little Rebels Award.
Elle's second novel, Show Us Who You Are, was Blackwell’s Book of the Month and one of The Bookseller’s Best Books of 2021. She is an advocate for better representation of neurodiversity in publishing, and currently lives in East London.
Aimée Felone
Aimée Felone is managing director of Knights Of – a commercial children’s publisher whose main focus is publishing inclusively by commissioning writers and illustrators from a diverse range of backgrounds, as well as hiring diversely. At Knights Of she has opened Brixton’s only children’s bookshop, Round Table Books, which exclusively stocks titles from underrepresented authors and illustrators.
Melanie Ramdarshan Bold
Dr Melanie Ramdarshan Bold is an Associate Professor at the University of Glasgow, where she teaches and researches children's and YA literature and book culture. Her research specialism is Inclusive Youth Literature and Book Culture, with a particular focus on the representation of people of colour, and the experiences of authors and readers of colour.
Melanie has published widely on the topic; alongside numerous publications about contemporary book culture. Her book Inclusive Young Adult Fiction: Authors of Colour in the United Kingdom, 2006-2016, was published by Palgrave in 2019. Melanie’s interests in Youth Literature and Book Culture extends beyond academia. She was a judge on the UKYA book prize and the Scottish Teenage Book Prize, and is on the Advisory Boards for the CLPE Reflecting Realities project, the Pop-up Pathways into Children’s Publishing project, and Literature Alliance Scotland, and works with a number of cultural organisations across the UK.
Denise Chapman
Dr Denise Chapman is a counternarrative storyteller, spoken word poet, and critical autoethnographer who lectures in children’s literature, early literacy, and inclusive children’s media at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia ...
Marisa Pintado
Marisa Pintado is the Publishing Director at Hardie Grant Children’s Publishing. She has worked in children's and YA books for more than 15 years and currently works and lives on Wurundjeri Country in Melbourne.
In 2012 Marisa founded the Ampersand Prize, one of Australia’s leading awards for debut novelists, and recently established the Bright Light Books imprint at Hardie Grant, to publish books about resilience, diversity, ability, empathy and change for young children.
Marisa has published a wide range of best-selling and award-winning titles for children and teenagers, including Welcome to Your Period and Welcome to Consent by women’s and adolescent health experts Dr Melissa Kang and Yumi Stynes; the Real Pigeons series, which is being adapted to film and TV by Nickelodeon; the School of Monsters series by beloved children’s author Sally Rippin; and the Explore Your World series with environmentalist Dr Tim Flannery.
Erin Wamala
Erin is the owner of The Kids' Bookshop and a practising Teacher Librarian. She spent almost 10 years working in publishing, followed by many years as a children's bookseller and librarian. Erin has been a judge for the CBCA Awards, is a regular contributor to Books + Publishing and was recently appointed to the board of the Melbourne Writer's Festival.