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***WRITER ON HOLIDAY***

Wish you were here – Kata Beach, Thailand x

The Diverse Book Awards 2022

Here I am with the incredible creators of The Diverse Book Awards, award-winning publicist, Helen Lewis and award-winning author, Abiola Bello. They’re both also founders of The Author School, so these ladies are totally bossing it, I can tell you!

The Diverse Book Awards has been going for 3 years but the event at Waterstones, Piccadilly on 20th October was the first ever in person and what a corker it was!

As winner of the YA category  back in 2020, I was lucky enough to be asked to host and hand out awards to this year’s winners: Benjamin Dean (children), Natasha Bowen (YA) and Kia Abdullah (adult). 100 guests attended and it was fantastic to meet the mix of talent and industry professionals who are all out there helping to share our stories of people from all walks of life.

I’m on telly!

When I was a kid, Tony Hart was my absolute hero, but I never once thought I’d end up teaching kids how to draw on the telly like he did!

This week I was invited to chat about my ‘Maddy Yip’ series with Janice Forsyth and fantastic studio audience from Westerton school, along with dozens of other schools via streaming. Thanks to the brilliant crew at BBC Scotland and Scottish Book Trust, they made what could have been a scary live TV event really enjoyable in the end.

I also read an extract and did a doodle, so if your kids would like to watch, you can find me and loads of other authors & illustrators on Author’s Live.

Maddy Yip has a voice!

I’m excited to announce that my Maddy Yip series for kids is now available on Audible!

I love that Maddy’s been given a voice by brilliant actress Emma Lau
(currently Serena in Hollyoaks), who is perfect as Maddy, plus there’s a range of talented artists covering other parts. It’s such a privilege to have this cast, not to mention being able to represent more diverse main characters in kids’ books in this way.

You can download both books on the links below:

Maddy Yip’s Guide to Life

Maddy Yip’s Guide to Holidays

Book to screen news

‘Chinglish’ is onto phase 2 of going to screen. It’s still early on but I’m  excited to be co-writing and fortunate to have a fantastic team alongside me.

Hopefully, if all goes well and it does make it to screen, this will be an important piece of work, as it would help push more ESEA representation in the creative arts. It would be great to be able to see an industry shift and as a bonus, encourage a cultural one too.

Here I am pictured with ‘Tina’, my bezzie from the story. She’s my friend in real life and a Cure fan in the book too.

No pussy-footing around

Been writing the sequel to my memoir. This is how you’ll find me lately, holed up in the house bookended by two furry companions, patiently waiting for me to reach wordcount for the day so they can get fed. I am Crazy Cat Lady!

The sequel documents what happens when I leave home aka the Chinese takeaway for the bright lights of London as a stunningly incompetent 16yr old. As you can tell, it’s going to be another dark humour, cause laughter is always the best medicine.

Screen adaptation phase 1

Can’t say too much before the press release, but I’ve just added ‘screenwriter’ to my profile.
How did this happen?
Heck knows.
Do I know what I’m doing?
No.

Luckily my producers have found me a cracking co-writer so together we’re going to smash this out of the park! More reveals to come…

Maddy Yip audiobooks are on the way

Great news! Audible are turning the Maddy Yip series into audiobooks.
I’m currently working on book 3 (manuscript just handed in), so I’m really excited that these will be available to listen to.

The series also now offers KS2 school classes (8+ years) fantastic reading and activity notes. Along with my popular Maddy Yip workshops, I’m delighted it’s being so well received.

Maddy Yip is officially a series

The second in the Maddy Yip series, ‘Maddy Yip’s Guide to Holidays’ was launched on May 5th!

In this comedy caper, Maddy goes off on a seaside break with her bezzie, dimwit little brother and bonkers grandad. Their main goal is to get on a brand new rollercoaster, the Mega Beast – but first they need tickets. They go on a manic quest and eventually get on the ride. But it turns out that after all that, they find it terrifying and hate every second! 😂

‘Maddy Yip’s Guide to Holidays’ is for ages 8-80 and is chock-full of hilarious drawings.

WeeWrite Festival 2022

The best thing about being an illustrator is coming to events like this JUST FOR FUN! It was great to be invited back to the WeeWrite Glasgow Book Festival, this time to talk about my Maddy Yip series and hold cartoon drawing workshops.

Four local primary schools came to the grand Mitchell Library and learned how to draw characters, expressions and use their imaginations to invent their own fairground rides, and wow, what mega-enthusiasm from the kids in my drawing sessions! I was chuffed to see that even the most reluctant artists got into cartooning by the end.