Avelyn davidson biography samples

Keynote speech – Storylines National Children’s Writers and Illustrators’ Hui, 6 October 2017

Once upon a time – about 1978 – a young mother of four was struck in the middle of the night with an idea for a children’s novel. A sailing adventure! A family in peril! Would they survive the night?!

This was very odd: she’d never written a word of fiction in her life. Sometime during the four years it took to write the story and get it published, she cut out the cartoon below from the Listener and filed it away. (Elderly man to non-so-young woman at cocktail party: And what are you falling back on to writing children’s books from?)

Miraculously, 35 years and about 50 books later, she was able to find it in a musty box file. We may laugh at the sub-text of that remark, but actually ‘falling back onto children’s books’ from success as adult writers has some noble exemplars: Leo Tolstoy, Oscar Wilde, Ian Fleming, A.A. Milne. Our own Janet Frame, Joy Cowley, William Taylor, Kate De Goldi, Graeme Lay, Barbara Else. Though it’s more often the reverse: highly skilled children’s writers ‘falling back’ onto writing for adults: think Mandy Hagar, Gaelyn Gordon, David Hill, Bernard Beckett, Fleur Beale, Roald Dahl, John Marsden, J.K. Rowling.

The long path to success of Unde