EMMA QUAY
Emma Quay (pronounced 'kway') grew up in a village near Cambridge, England and has wanted to illustrate children's books for as long as she can remember. When she was two years old her mum would find scraps of paper covered in drawings of little characters under her pillow and she continued to draw constantly throughout her childhood, stapling tiny books together to write and illustrate.

The obsession continued, and much further down the track Emma graduated with an Honours degree in Graphic Design from Newcastle-Upon-Tyne Polytechnic, specialising in illustration and printmaking. Part of the course involved designing shampoo bottles and road signs, but Emma much preferred illustrating Alice In Wonderland, Little Red Riding Hood, Ovid's Metamorphoses, life drawing and sketching in the open (occasionally even sitting, shivering inside a plastic garbage bag in the snow with a sketch book and charcoal pencil.)

After leaving college some of Emma's illustrative work was purchased by The Victoria and Albert Museum, London for its permanent collection of prints and drawings. She continued to exhibit her monoprints and charcoal sketches, travelling to Morocco, India, Nepal and Bhutan to sketch, whilst also working as a freelance illustrator for educational publishers and children's magazines.

After moving to Sydney in 1993, Emma was introduced to the publisher, Mark Macleod, with whom she has worked on five picture books to date. Champions, written by Jonathan Harlen, was her first picture book in Australia and a CBC Notable Book in 1999, it was also cited as a 'Book Useful for Therapists' in the 12th Annual Family Award for Children's Literature.

In 2003 Bear and Chook, with text by Lisa Shanahan, was shortlisted for the CBC Book of the Year Awards in the Early Childhood Category and was also shortlisted for the 2004 Bilby Awards. Thank You For My Yukky Present, written by Meredith Hooper, has been listed as a CBC Notable Book. Emma has also worked with Penguin Books Australia on their popular Aussie Nibbles series and has also illustrated for the Hotshots series. Other titles include Reggie and Lu (written and illustrated by Emma), Daddy's Having a Horse (written by Lisa Shanahan, due March 2005) and Good Night, Me (written by Andrew Daddo, due April 2005).

Emma Quay lives in Sydney with her Australian husband and two young daughters.

More information is available at her fabulous website

Click here for a list of Emma's published books

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