Miss Franklin

About the Author

Libby Hathorn (Author)

Libby Hathorn is an award-winning author and poet of more than eighty books for children, young adults, and adult readers. Her recent picture book No! Never!, written with her daughter Lisa Hathorn-Jarman, won the CBCA Children's Picture Book of the Year Award, Younger Readers, 2021. Translated into several languages and adapted for both stage and screen, her work has won honours in Australia, the United States, Great Britain and Holland. She is the recipient of the ABIA Pixie O'Harris Award, 2022, and the Lady Cutler Award, 2020, for distinguished services to Australian children's literature. In 2014 she won The Alice Award, a national award given to 'a woman who has made a distinguished and long term contribution to Australian literature'. In 2017 she won the Asher Award, a peace prize, for A Soldier, a Dog and a Boy.

Libby is a keen educator who has lectured part-time at Sydney University and is devoted to being an ambassador for poetry anywhere and everywhere. She has been a National Ambassador for Reading and often acts as a judge for various literary prizes, including the NSW Premier's Literary Awards.

www.libbyhathorn.com

Phil Lesnie (Illustrator)

Phil Lesnie is a Sydney-based illustrator of children's books. He is also a children's bookseller. It is entirely possible that he hasn't read a title written for adults since he became one. He works primarily in watercolour, because in a watercolour painting even mistakes look lovely. He is the illustrator of Feathers, which was shortlisted for the Prime Minister's Literary Awards in 2018. His first three books were CBCA Notable books in 2015, 2016 and 2018. But his first cat, Cassidy, is notable all of the time.