September 2024
Ran a Scrawl Crawl event at Aberdeen Art Gallery with SCBWI’s Karen McDonald on the ‘Wildlife Photography of the Year Award’ exhibition.
August 2024
Story Sold to The People’s Friend
June 2024
Highly Commended for the Kelpies Prize for Writing
Story sold to The People’s Friend
February 2024
Thoroughly enjoyed taking part in the Granite Noir Book Festival as one of the ‘Locals in the Limelight’ to perform an extract from a chapter book I have written.
Story sold to The People’s Friend
January 2024
I was absolutely delighted to have a story, ‘Blooming Marvellous’, published in the wonderful magazine, The People’s Friend. In addition to this, I was asked to be the Writer of the Week.
September 2023
Ran a ‘Scrawl and Crawl’ event at Aberdeen Art Gallery based on the exhibition of Quentin Blake’s work.
April 2022
Edinburgh International Book Festival story ‘The Wee One’.
August 2017
Reading at the Booked! Festival
Scottish Book Trust:
Extracts in ‘Forced to Fly’ by Jo Parfitt
Winner of the Poetry Competition with poem ‘Laughter’. Poem was performed by OperaDans company.
Poet in Residence for ‘The Underground’ newspaper, Den Haag, The Netherlands.
Book Reviews
I review Picture Books – please see the separate page on this website for this, thank you.
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Here is my first ever entry to the #FallWritingFrenzy
Agent and author Kaitlyn Leann Sanchez (@KaitlynLeann17) and children’s author Lydia Lukidis (@LydiaLukidis) are running a kidlit contest; #FallWritingFrenzy.
For information about the contest : https://lydialukidis.wordpress.com/fall-writing-frenzy-contest-2020/
To read the other entries: https://lydialukidis.wordpress.com/2020/09/30/fall-writing-frenzy-entry-form/
We were given photos to choose from and I chose the image below to write about and was also inspired by the Oscar Wilde story of the The Selfish Giant. If you’d like, you can read my piece underneath.
Helping Horace
Horace the Hedgehog hid in the hedge, peeking out at as the sun began to rise.
The wind howled and the leaves danced, swirling and whirling. Slowly Horace’s eyes closed, he sniffled and snuffled, curled into a ball and slept.
That morning the children came. Running, calling and crying, ‘Look at all the leaves that have fallen!’
They grabbed armfuls, flinging them high up into the sky. Crunching and scrunching they marched across the garden. Jumping and leaping, scarpering here and there. Lying down they were Autumn Angels. Brushing and sweeping they gathered a giant red, gold and brown leaf mountain and … jumped right in!
Then the children collected the leaves into big, big bags to take away. All except for one little pile in the corner. Scurrying into the house they called, ‘Time for hot chocolate and marshmallows!’
An owl hooted, a midnight black cat slunk along the garden wall, a mouse scampered by and Horace awoke.
Sniffling and snuffling he explored the garden by the light of the moon until he discovered the pile in the corner. Hiding under the leaves, Horace the hedgehog rolled up into a tight ball; it was time to hibernate.
198 words.
Switch the Kettle on, Love 