NADIA
WHEATLEY
Nadia Wheatley has a list of award-winning
titles that cover the genres of fiction, history, biography
and picture books. She writes for adults as well as for young
people. Nadia is an inspiring speaker, with 25 years experience
of giving lectures, talks and workshops to young people and
adults, at all levels of education.
Using
the theme ‘Letting
the Landscape Tell the Story’,
Nadia offers interactive talks to primary and secondary
students. As well as explaning how she gets her ideas from
place, Nadia
shows many examples of art by the various illustrators
with whom she has worked.
For
secondary students and adults, Nadia offers practical workshops
on writing short stories. She
demonstrates her
ideas with examples from her recently published anthology, Listening to Mondrian.
   
Together
with artist / designer Ken
Searle, Nadia also offers
hands-on environmental workshops that combine writing
poetry with art and design. These are suitable for
students from
Years 3-12.
After
work with Ken and Nadia, one NESB student wrote: ‘I
really liked art and I learnt how to shade, and how
to draw things faster, but most of all I really improved my
writing’.
Since
the beginning of her career, Nadia’s
books have reflected her commitment to social justice. Her
first book, Five Times Dizzy, was often
described as the first multicultural children’s booking
this country.
My Place,
illustrated by Donna Rawlins, showed Australia's history through
the eyes of many different
children who lived
in one place over hundreds and even thousands of years.
 
Highway (illustrated
by Andrew McLeam) is one of the rare picture books to portray
the working life
of an Australian
family who live in the outer suburbs.
In novels
for young adults such as The House that
Was Eureka, The Blooding,
and Vigil, Nadia Wheatley has
tackled issues such as unemployment, homelessness,
conservation,
and the
dangers of drug abuse.
Over
the period 1998-2001 Nadia Wheatley and Ken Searle worked as
consultants
at the school at Papunya (NT). As
part of their work, they helped forty Indigenous staff
and students
produce their own book, the multi-award winning Papunya
School Book of Country and History.
 
In 2005 Nadia and Ken developed an innovative Harmony project
with infant and primary students from Muslim,
Catholic and state schools in Sydney's south-west. Examples
of the
students' writing and art are included in the
picture book Going Bush (2007), which has
a narrative text by Nadia and is illustrated
and designed by Ken.
After
the Harmony project was concluded, one student wrote: “On
this journey I experienced the bush and I experienced
life. I found a brand new way to learn, and know new things.”
Awards
won by Nadia Wheatley’s books for young people
include the NSW Premier's Children's Book Prize
(1983 and 1986), the Children's Book of the Year
for Younger Readers (1988), the inaugural Eve Pownall Award
(1988),
and seven honour listings in the CBCA Awards.
Her biography of Charmain Clift was the Age Book of the Year
for Non-Fiction
(2001) and won the NSW Premier’s History
Award for Australian History (2002).
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