Pat Simmons is a writer of poetry, short stories, flash fiction and picture books for children. She lives at Scarborough on the NSW South Coast with a menagerie of critters, which includes cats, dogs and a quantity of stick insects. She has a Bachelor degree in Children’s Services and an Advanced Diploma in Community Service Management. She has worked with children in a variety of childcare and museum settings and has also taught child studies at TAFE. Her work has been published in anthologies and children’s literary magazines including NSW School Magazine, Alphabet Soup & Looking Glass Magazine. She has won writer competitions in Australia and the UK. The Cat Thief is Pat’s fifth published picture book.Liz Duthie has a B.A. Fine Arts, Bendigo CAE, and a Grad. Dip. Special Education, from La Trobe University. She has honed her illustration skills and industry knowledge through SCWBI, Australian Society of Authors, Lilla Rogers Make Art That Sells online courses, and many other conferences and workshops, dedicated practice and reading literally hundreds of picture books to three sparky daughters. Liz’s fine arts training has given her a flexible style that expresses humour, emotion and movement. She is able to respond to a variety of texts, including non-fiction. She specializes in illustration for picture books and middle grade chapter books using traditional mediums such as water colour, pen and ink, acrylic, pencil and mixed media. She is also Education Officer at the La Trobe Art Institute, Bendigo.
