Beloved children’s author Lian Tanner on her latest novel Spellhound. How to gamify your writing to get more done. And win Mim and the Disastrous Dog Show from The Travelling Bookshop series by Katrina Nannestad, illustrated by Cheryl Orsini.
Lian Tanner has been dynamited while scuba diving and arrested while busking. She once spent a week in the jungles of Papua New Guinea, hunting for a Japanese soldier left over from the Second World War. She likes secrets, old bones, and animals that are not what they seem. Nowadays she lives by the beach in southern Tasmania.
Lian's bestselling fantasy series The Keepers won two Aurealis Awards for Best Australian Children's Fantasy and has been translated into eleven languages. Her second series, The Hidden, has been published in Australia/New Zealand and North America. Lian's third series, The Rogues, is set in the same world as The Keepers, and has been translated into Spanish.
Lian's first picture book Ella and the Ocean (illustrated by Jonathan Bentley) won the 2020 NSW Premier's Award for Children's Literature and the 2022 Tasmanian Literary Award for Children's Books. A Clue for Clara won the 2021 Sisters in Crime Davitt Award for Best Children's Crime Novel, and its sequel, Rita's Revenge, was shortlisted for the 2022 NSW Premier's Award for Children's Literature.
