Perth Words… exploring possibilities.

Interview by Nicole Melanson ~

Valerie Khoo is a multiple award-winning entrepreneur and mentor to businesses and start-ups. She is the founder and national director of the Australian Writers’ Centre, the country’s leading centre for writing courses. It has trained more than 23,000 students from all over the world.

Valerie is also the author of Power Stories: The 8 stories you MUST tell to build an epic business.

Twitter: @valeriekhoo

Valerie Khoo on LinkedIn

HOW DID YOU GET STARTED?

I had always loved writing at school but never thought of it as a “real” career for some reason. So I became an accountant, can you believe it? However, I always had a creative itch that I wanted to scratch, so I did some writing courses for fun, outside of work. Finally, after a few years in the corporate world, I woke up one day and realised that I had to…

Interview by Nicole Melanson ~

Jacquelyn Mitchard is the author of 21 books, including 15 novels for adults and teens. Her first book, The Deep End of the Ocean, was the first selection of the Oprah Winfrey Book Club, with more than 4 million copies in print in 27 languages worldwide. Her second novel was nominated for the Orange Prize, and two of her books have been made into films. A member of the 2003 Fiction Jury for the National Book Award, Mitchard is the editor of Merit Press Books, a Young Adult imprint under the aegis of F & W Media, and was the 2013 recipient of the Bram Stoker Award for a ghost story in a collection honoring her mentor, Ray Bradbury, a story also a finalist for the Shirley Jackson Award. Her novels have enjoyed wide popular appeal as well as critical acclaim…

Cordelia Jensen

This month, What Was on… celebrates the release of Skyscraping with author Cordelia Jensen!

Skyscraping has been hailed as ‘exquisite free verse poems.’ ‘Illuminating and deeply felt.’ (Booklist’s Starred Review). And Pop Crush has named it one of the 10 Best New YA Books that Explore Sexuality.

Mira is just beginning her senior year of high school when she discovers her father with his male lover. Her world–and everything she thought she knew about her family–is shattered instantly. Unable to comprehend the lies, betrayal, and secrets that–unbeknownst to Mira–have come to define and keep intact her family’s existence, Mira distances herself from her sister and closest friends as a means of coping. But her father’s sexual orientation isn’t all he’s kept hidden. A shocking health scare brings to light his battle with HIV. As Mira struggles to make sense of the many fractures in her family’s…