Nova Weetman started her career in film and television, winning Best Australian Short at MIFF for her short film Mr Wasinski’s Songand being nominated for an AWGIE. She wrote for Neighbours, Pixel Pinkie, H20, Buzz Bumble, Wild But True and Fanshaw and Crudnut. Nova has published short fiction in Overland, Mslexia, Kill Your Darlings, Wet Ink and Island and non-fiction in Overland and Going Down Swinging. She’s the writer of three middle-grade books in the Choose Your Own Ever Afterseries, and three YA novels through UQP, including Everything is Changed (CBCA Notable, Shortlisted for the Davitt Award). Her middle-grade novel, The Secrets We Keep, was a CBCA Notable, shortlisted for the Readings Children’s Prize, shortlisted for the Speech Pathology Award and shortlisted for the ABIA Awards. The sequel, The Secrets We Share came out in 2017 and the trilogy will be completed in 2021. She has published a series for younger children called Zooniverse, and her latest middle-grade novel, Sick Bay, is a CBCA Notable.
Emily Gale has worked in the children’s book industry for over twenty years, as an editor, a reader for a literary agent, and a children’s book buyer for Melbourne indie bookstore Readings. Hailing from London but a resident of Melbourne for 12 years, Emily’s first Australian Young Adult novel was Steal My Sunshine (2013). Her middle-grade novel, The Other Side of Summer (2016) was shortlisted for the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards and published in America where it was a Junior Library Guild selection. Its YA follow-up, I Am Out With Lanterns (2018) was shortlisted for the Ethel Turner Award and the WA Young Readers Book Award. Eliza Boom, a hapless inventor, is her junior fiction character and is published in multiple languages.
Emily and Nova have co-written a middle-grade novel. It will be published by Text in 2021.
Nova's next novel, The Edge of Thirteen. Available March 2021.