James Foley

Sydney Writers (and Secret Agents) Festival

I recently spent a packed couple of days at the Sydney Writers Festival Family Day! Here’s a couple of highlights.

A spy infiltrates the Festival…

As part of a panel on Junior Fiction, Adrian Beck and I had a spy-off. The objective? Blend in and make your way to the stage without being seen, using any means necessary.

This here hombre was served humble pie as his last meal, with bullets for dessert, as I went up against Serena Geddes, Heath McKenzie and Charmaine Ledden-Lewis in an Illustrator Battle. Congrats to Charmaine (AKA Lead-Pencil Lewis) for being the quickest draw in the inner-west. Special thanks to our excellent MC (and chief cat wrangler) Adrian Beck.

James’ Big Bookshop Tour – the sequel

I managed to spend some free time on my recent Sydney trip visiting bookshops with my friend (& carpool bud), author Cristy Burne. We managed to get to 12 bookshops in one day, and I visited 21 in total.

School holiday cartooning workshop (online)

Join me for an online cartooning workshop this school holidays!⁠
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Learn how to draw characters from my new graphic novel series, SECRET AGENT MOLE. (NB: if you did the workshop last holidays, you’ll be learning how to draw all-new characters!).
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PLUS go in the draw to WIN signed sketches from the session! ⁠

Tickets are only $5 per family, and half of all proceeds go to Room to Read – a wonderful international charity that builds libraries and creates books for children in the developing world.
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This is an online workshop and will be held via Zoom. You’ll get the zoom link via email once you register. ⁠
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Suitable for kids aged 7-10. ⁠
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DATE: ⁠Sat July 15th⁠
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TIME: ⁠
9am – 10am (WA) ⁠
10:30am – 11:30am (NT, SA) ⁠
11am – 12pm (AEST)⁠
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WHERE: ⁠online (zoom)⁠
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TICKETS: ⁠$5 per family. ⁠Register here.

Upcoming events, June-Sept

I’ve got some fantastic events coming up:

the Perth Supanova Comic Con;
the Littlescribe Mini-Writing Festival;
storytime workshops at The Lane Bookshop;
an online cartooning workshop; and
three launches for Secret Agent Mole, book 2!

Details below.

June 24-25: Supanova Comic Con, Perth

In a surreal and welcome turn of events, I’ll be a guest author at this year’s Supanova Perth!

Stellarphant on the REAL shortlist

Great news! Stellarphant has been shortlisted in Australia’s biggest children’s choice book awards – the REAL awards.

It stands for Reading and Enjoying Australian Literature, and is a partnership between the YABBAs (Young Australia Best Book Awards) in Victoria, the KOALAs (Kids’ Own Australian Literature Awards) in New South Wales and the KROC (Kids’ Reading Oz Choice) awards in the Northern Territory. So really, it’s like three shortlistings in one!

Big big thanks to the organising teams behind the awards, to all the teachers and librarians who collect the votes, and to all the kids who voted around Australia. And congrats to everyone with books on the shortlist!