Libby Hathorn: biography

Libby Hathorn is an award-winning Australian author of more than forty books for children. Her stories have been translated into several languages and adapted for stage and screen. Her work has won honours in Australia as well as in the United States, United Kingdom and Holland. She was awarded a Centenary Medal in 2001.

Hallmark Hall of Fame has made a movie of her best-selling young adult novel, Thunderwith, re-titled The Echo of Thunder. It starred Judy Davis, who was nominated for an EMMY award in the US for her performance as Gladwyn. In 2004, Libby’s children’s picture storybook, Sky Sash So Blue, published in the United States, was performed as an opera in Birmingham, Alabama. Previously, Grandma’s Shoes was performed as an opera by Opera Australia and Theatre of Image. Libby was awarded an AWGIE for the libretto based on this picture storybook, in 2001.

More recently, her CDROM series Weirdstop won the AIMIA Award, 2004 (Australian Interactive Media Industry Awards) as Best Children’s Product; and in 2005 the NSW Society of Women Writers’ Bi-annual Award for Older Readers. Wonderstop won the Energy Australia National Trust Heritage Award (Education) 2007.

Libby lectures part-time in Creative Writing (Children’s Literature) at Sydney University. She travels widely, talking about her work and Australian literature, and is leading a tour group for a Writers’ Retreat in Vietnam, with Centre for Continuing Education, Sydney University. Within Australia, as an Australia Day Ambassador, Libby travels to country towns each year where she talks about the importance of Australian literature.

Libby’s novel, Letters to a Princess, (ABC) was released September, 2007. Her recently completed historical novel, Georgiana: Woman of Flowers (Hachette Livre) as well as the play based on her picture storybook, The Tram to Bondi Beach (Currency Press) released 2008.

Libby is currently working on a special arts project entitled 100 Views in several schools, both here and internationally. 100 Views celebrates community through poetry, artwork and a festival. Her anthology of poetry All Along the River is in development with the ABC.

See full booklist and awards www.libbyhathorn.com