Coral has illustrated and/or written 63 fiction and non-fiction books for children, published in Australia and internationally. She has studied art and illustration in places as exotic as Prague and Florence, and also travelled multiple times to Antarctica, first as an Arts Fellow with the Australian Antarctic Division, and then as an artist-in-residence on tourist voyages. As well as producing numerous books, games, articles and exhibitions inspired by these experiences, Coral’s Antarctica, The Heart of the World, which she wrote and illustrated, won the Environment Award for Children’s Literature in 2004. More recently, Coral has finished a production for the Australian Antarctic Division on Australia’s new icebreaker and science program. It includes an 8 page tabloid interactive and playable jigsaw for all ages. Currently Coral is working on a book for an older audience with Alison Lester, on an emotive response to Antarctica.
Coral will be drawing on some of these and other experiences in this session, and lifting the lid on some of her amazing creative processes. She will be sharing her journals and discussing how she decides which parts of a story she’s going to show using pictures, and which will be told with words. She will explain how words and illustrations complement each other but work differently, and reveal the methods she uses to decide how to tell a story.
This session will be held on Saturday the 14th of September at Hadley’s Orient Hotel. Tickets can be obtained here.
The session is best suited to adults, but Coral will also be presenting two sessions for children aged seven and over, on the Saturday afternoon, at Parliament Gardens (the lawns in front of Parliament House) – see the Festival Programme for details, or RSVP for these sessions here).