MY WRITING CAREER
I remember curling up with an exercise book and pencil to write my first rhyming alphabet, so young I’m sure I had only just begun writing. Poetry has always been significant in my life and I continue to read it for inspiration on a fairly regular basis. Both my parents read my siblings and me poetry aloud – my mother recited bush poetry too, reams of it – and my father read regularly, often from an old grey poetry book, A Treasury of Verse. This book was a curious collection of Australian bush ballads as famous as Banjo Paterson’s The Man From Snowy River and wonderful English classic poems such as John Keats’ To a Nightingale and William Wordsworth’s To Daffodils. It seemed magical to me when our father read this bedtime poetry which was so dense and yet so liquid. I sometimes could not really understand the sense of some of the text but very much related to the ‘singingness’ or the spell of the words.

Megalong Valley Blue Mountains
1950's

All through primary school we learned to recite various Australian poems such as Dorothea Mackellar’s My Country and Henry Kendall’s Bellbirds. And this too was significant I believe in my falling in love with words at an early age. Sad to say in high school we were not at all encouraged to write imaginatively and in senior years I was really looking for some guidance in writing. Mind you I delighted in our study of English poetry and of Shakespeare in particular. We studied two plays a year in great depth, a wonderful basis for the appreciation of the English language. But now it seems incredible that we did not study a single Australian novel or poem then. This gave a clear message about the value of our own literature and not a good one. Thank heavens so much has changed in that regard.

Libby (centre) with sister Sue and best friend Pat, late high school days

My first efforts in publication were unsuccessful. I still have it – a book about our black and white bitzer dog called Kyo, illustrated by my best friend. As a young teacher I was keen to ‘teach’ others how easy poetry writing was, and it’s not surprising my first published effort was a kind of text book on poetry Go Lightly followed by some others written with my husband John.

Then at last my first picture storybook Stephen’s Tree, which was set in my brother’s garden market, was published. This was at a time when publishers were not only talking about Australian literature as worth promoting but Australian children’s literature was coming of age. The publisher at Methuen (with its parent company in England) was not at first happy about the tree being a gum tree, wanting an oak, ash or elm so the book would sell better in England! But I must have been persuasive. I was told I was the first children’s author in Australia to have her books published as bi-lingual texts. Stephen’s Tree and Lachlan’s Walk were published in English, Greek, English and Italian editions. It was like a roller coaster for me with one book following another with enthusiasm from my publisher Methuen (who later became Heinemann) and then other houses such as Penguin, Random House, Lothian and Hodder. It was great to make friends with other authors and illustrators at this time when kids’ lit began really blossoming – folk like Allan Baillie and Libby Gleeson, Donna Rawlins and Nadia Wheatley, Margaret Wild and Brian Caswell to mention just a few. And then there was the first ever Children’s Book Council Conference where everyone in kids’ lit came together for the first time in Australia! And where my book Love Me Tender was launched by Little Patti churning out a few old Elvis tunes!

When Heinemann sold out, it was Hodder Headline who bought my backlist in 1998, including Thunderwith, and they continue to publish my young adult novels.

Libby in writing workshop 1995

Libby at Voices on the Coast Conference 2001