Riveted Press Authors

Kate Gordon grew up in a very bookish house, with two librarian parents,in a small town by the sea in Tasmania. In 2009 she won a Varuna fellowship and hasn’t stopped writing since. Kate won the 2016 IBBY Ena Noel Award for Writing Clementine, and in 2018 was shortlisted in the Dorothy Hewett Awards for an Unpublished Manuscript. Her YA novel Girl Running, Boy Falling (2018) is a CBCA Notable. In 2021, Aster’s Good, Right Things (published by Riveted Press) won the CBCA Book of the Year for Younger Readers, and in 2023, Xavier in the Meantime was shortlisted in the same category. 

Dr Helen Edwards writes diverse stories of nature, magic and history. She is also a freelance writer, mentor and speaker and has a PhD in Psychology. Helen has type 1 diabetes, and lives with anxiety and ADHD. She likes to include characters in her stories who are neurodivergent and/or who live with physical and mental health conditions, out in the world, having adventures. Helen is passionate about inspiring action for our planet and encouraging people to understand how important nature is to all of us. Animals and the environment feature in all her stories. Her debut novel, The Rebels of Mount Buffalo, was published by Riveted Press in 2023. 

Kim Rackham lives in Melbourne and has been a bookworm since a very early age. She thinks out her stories while walking in nature, and these spaces often find a place in her work. She spent many years working as an early childhood teacher and believes that language, stories and books prepare us for our world and help us through the trickiest of times. The childhood that her parents gave her, and the joy of her own three children, inspire her every day.

Karyn is a primary school teacher who specialises in music. She has had several poems published in The School Magazine and is an active member of the Hunter CBCA Committee, a regular volunteer for the Newcastle Writers Festival and can often be found around the kid-lit scene at conferences and other events. My Pet Archie (Riveted Press, 2025) is Karyn’s debut book. She lives in Newcastle with her family.

DJ Taylor is a born-and-bred Queenslander. Early in her career, she was a primary school teacher and a teacher-librarian, and also taught outback kids on School of the Air. With her husband Hendrikus, she loves to walk, and for years has written popular travel blogs recording their treks across the UK, Europe, South America and Antarctica, including the famous Camino trail. Her other passions include watercolor painting and learning Spanish. She is a Life Member of the Watercolor Society of Qld, and current president of the Kilcoy Art Society. Anna’s War (Riveted Press, 2025) is her debut novel, inspired by the experiences of her relatives in the Netherlands during World War II.

Melissa is a writer with a deeply held love for language. This love has taken her to remote island villages, medieval cities and ancient alpine fortresses. For a brief moment, it even landed her a job as a tour bus driver for a helicopter company.   These days, she spends most of her time writing and teaching English, sharing her love of language with students and colleagues.  Her debut junior fiction novel, Lexie Moon & The Word Burgling Bungle (2025) is out now from Riveted Press, and is followed by Lexie Moon & The Space Day Disaster.  

Sarah knew, even in primary school, that her dream was be a children’s author and illustrator. Over the last few years she has exhibited, sold commissions, and been shortlisted for prestigious prizes such as the Young Archie and the Mosman Youth Art Prize, as well as placing first in the CYA illustration competition. In 2021, she graduated from a Bachelor of Visual Art and Design, with the Dean's Award for the most outstanding major work - a complete mock-up of an illustrated novel. This novel is due to be released by Riveted Press in 2025. Sarah's writing, like her art, expresses an unconstrained delight in the beauty of the world, coupled with a sensitive awareness of human struggles and unfulfilled longings. 

Anna is a bookworm, baker and children’s book maker.

Rosi was born in the small kingdom of Swaziland (now eSwatini) and moved to the small island of Tasmania, Australia with her family when she was just a toddler. She first discovered her love for entertaining children when she worked as a children’s face painter for major supermarkets and AFL football games.

Matt Samuel has worked in Sydney and London as a primary school teacher, and for the last 21 years he has been working in magazine advertising. Matt is a confident and experienced public speaker who is comfortable talking to classes of children as well as large groups. He is a co-founder of Australia’s largest performing-arts event for schools, WAKAKIRRI (wakarri.com), and proudly sits on their executive committee. Matt completed the AWC’s Writing Picture Books course in late 2020 and has been working on a number of stories since then. He loves the many ways a great story can spark young minds. And his hope is that his stories will one day do the same.

Rachel Jackson is a senior intelligence analyst and in her work – just like in her books – she looks for clues, solves puzzles and explores options to help the good guys win the day. Rachel has been researching and authoring intelligence products for over a decade. She loves to relax with her two little girls, horses, llamas and ducks in the green hills of Central West NSW.

Rachel is the author and illustrator of Escape from Cuttlefish Cove, which is her debut fiction book. It is also the first in the Solve It Your Way series of multi-path adventures, where the reader chooses where the story goes next. 

After many years in marketing, Stephanie now spends her time writing sweet, silly and sidesplitting stories for children. Originally from Spokane, Washington, this Australian citizen can (currently) be found in London, England with her husband and young son. Stephanie is also a book reviewer for Armadillo Magazine and The Children’s Book Review and a former book reviewer for the Children’s Book Council of Australia. Stephanie has authored multiple picture books and board books.

Lynn Ward is a children’s author from New South Wales. She grew up in the country and loves living in a small town where she can see the stars at night. Lynn writes picture books and she loves rhyming and making reading fun for children. In her spare time she is a journalist for a country newspaper, a freelance editor, a grandmother to a brood of grandchildren and a mum to four grown-up kids. 

Sigi Hallis Cohen hails from Port Elizabeth, South Africa, and now lives in Perth, Western Australia. He is an avid writer with a compulsion for matching words that rhyme. When not writing children’s verse, Sigi works as a lawyer which he says greatly alleviates the stresses of writing children’s picture books.

Heather Neilly is a writer, scientist and lover of the wild. She is the author of Who’s Making That Noise? with Anil Tortop. She works as an ecologist, studying the relationships between native plants and animals, and working to restore degraded ecosystems. She currently lives in the Riverland region of South Australia with her husband, two daughters and red dog Cliff.