Craig Silvey – April 23 2017

International Guide Dog Day – April 27 2017

Craig is a novelist and the singer/songwriter for the band The Nancy Sikes! His work has been published internationally and the film rights to his novel Jasper Jones were sold to Australian director Rebecca O’Brien in 2012 to become a film starring Toni Collette and Hugo Weaving. Craig wrote his first novel, Rhubarb, at age 19 and just five years later Jasper Jones was published. Craig has received the 2005 Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Novelist Award and has won the 2009 Indie Book of the Year Award – Fiction, the 2009 WA Premier’s Literary Award for Fiction, the ABIA Book of the Year 2010 and the ABIA Literary Fiction Book of the Year 2010. His children’s books include The World According to Warren, illustrated by Sonia Martinez, about a guide dog with an inflated ego, and The Amber Amulet, about 12 year old Liam McKenzie, ‘The Masked Avenger’ and his trusty sidekick, Richie the Power Beagle.

Rhubarb
Fremantle Press, 2004; ISBN 9781921361494
Meet Eleanor Rigby: tiny, blind and left behind. Led by her zealous, overprotective guide dog, Warren, she courses constantly through the places she knows. Tired, mired and sequestered from the world, Eleanor can’t shirk the feeling she’s going nowhere slowly. Until, of course, she recognises something in the sound of Ewan Dempsey, reclusive and compulsive maker and player of cellos, who impels in Eleanor a rare moment of caprice ….
‘… both sad and hilarious … a daring and moving work.’ – The West Australian
‘Written with wry humour and great depth of perception, this moving and often hilarious novel is a must-read.’ – Melbourne Weekly

Jasper Jones
Allen and Unwin, 2009; ISBN 9781742372624
On a hot summer’s night, late 1965, in the regional mining town of Corrigan, precocious and bookish 13 year old Charlie Bucktin is awoken by rebellious, mixed-race and solitary outcast Jasper Jones who begs for his help. Taken through town to Jasper’s secret glade in the bush, Charlie bears witness to Jasper’s horrible discovery. With this secret like a brick in his belly, Charlie is pushed and pulled by a town closing in on itself in fear and suspicion as he locks horns with his tempestuous mother, falls nervously in love, and battles to keep a lid on his zealous best friend, Jeffrey Lu. And in vainly attempting to restore the parts that have been shaken loose, Charlie learns to discern the truth from the myth, and why white lies creep like a curse.