About Susanne Gervay

Rock music, girls, guys, bullying, life - that's what I write about.Photo of Susanne Gervay

I didn't know I was going to be an author. I just wrote because I had to. I love being an author because I can share my imagination, thoughts, experiment with words, create new meanings. Being an author means that I can speak to readers and hopefully make life funnier, happier, and people 'get it'. My I Am Jack and Super Jack are inspired by my son when he was growing up. The books deals with bullying and blended families and friends and just what happens in life. Everyone loves the joke about the 'little red man' in JACK. I Am Jack has been made into a play that travels around Australia from indigenous settlements in the outback to country towns, from Mt Isa to Kalgoorlie. It's translated into other languages including Bahasa, Korean and Romanian.

Butterflies has been nominated as Outstanding Youth Literature on Disability (IBBY) and The Cave won the Biennial Society of Women Writers Book Award.

That's Why I Wrote This Song is especially important to me, as it is a collaborative work with my beautiful, talented daughter Tory, and many young people who created the video for PSYCHO DAD.

Writing and life are the same to me. I'm not someone who sits at a desk and writes all day. Writing is here and there, slotted in at night when I'm not too tired. I often get up at four in the morning to write. It's quiet. I work at The Hughenden Boutique Hotel, have kids, do writing tours. I have to admit that sometimes I go away for a week, so I can finish a book.

I am a specialist in child growth & development, a teacher and lecturer, manage the marketing and media for The Hughenden, a literary hotel in Sydney, am deeply involved in writing organisations like SCBWI and the Sydney Children's Writers & Illustrators Network at The Hughenden, and the NSW Writers Centre.

I am on the Board of the NSW Writers Centre, co-head of SCBWI Australia and New Zealand, lead the Sydney Writers & Illustrators Network at the Hughenden and was awarded The Lady Cutler Award for Distingushed Services to Children's Literature in 2007.

Download and read my CV

Related websites:

Veronika Gervay - http://abc.net.au/rn/perspective/stories/2006/1634484.htm

You can read the transcript here, or listen to the audio. It's 3MB, so will take a few minutes to load, but it's well worth it.

I have won the ANU Short Story Award and the National Society of Women Writers Short Story Award.I have had numerous short stories published in literary journals such as Southerly, Quadrant, Mattoid, Westerly, Voices (Australian National Library), Hermes and numerous university publications.

My academic background includes a BA (University of Sydney), Dip Ed (Advanced College of Education Victoria), M.Ed (university of NSW), M.A (University of Technology Sydney).

I combine my creativity with my great interest in educational psychology of children, to write literature that taps into deep personal experience and understandings of life. Susanne at her computer

My children and YA books have been highly commended and shortlisted for the Children's Literature Prize for Peace and the Family Therapy Awards, among other awards. My YA novel, The Cave received The Society of Women Writers Biennial Book Awards 2003 which I am very proud of. Despite the confronting youth male nature of that book, in awarding The Cave the prize, the Society of Women Writers were not subject to age or gender. They went beyond it.