Visiting Authors JC Burke and Lili Wilkinson
JC Burke, Australian young adult author, spoke to the Year 9 boys about her writing and how she gets ideas for her books. Burke primarily spoke about her book ‘Pig Boy’ which was selected in the 2012 Older Readers books notable category by the Children’s Book Council of Australia (CBCA).
Burke captured the boys’ attention describing her unlikeable character and the situation he gets into, thereby encouraging them to read the book to find out what the situation was. She also spoke about writing the section in her book that deals with pig shooting, as one of her main characters does pig shooting for a living. She discovered that there is actually a journal called ‘Bacon Busters’ that discusses pig shooting, but she wanted to experience it firsthand so that she could describe it in detail to her readers. She managed to organise a pig shooting trip and showed the boys photos of her gutting a pig. It was an enthralling talk that demonstrated the lengths an author is prepared to go to in order to make their stories come to life for the reader.
Lili Wilkinson also visited the School on Monday and delighted the Year 8 girls with stories of how she became an author and where her ideas come from. Lili was first published at the age of 12 in Voiceworks magazine. After studying Creative Arts at the University of Melbourne she worked in the industry writing for various publications.
With her witty sense of humour and enthusiasm she explained that she draws her inspiration from everyday life such as museums, her friends and reading books, from fairy-tales to Australia’s colonial history. Lili has written seven books that have been published in a number of countries and read an excerpt from her latest book ‘The Zigzag Effect’.
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