The Slushpile Team



Candy Gourlay



Candy Gourlay is a former journalist and author, born and raised in the Philippines but now based in the United Kingdom.


Her debut novel TALL STORY was published by David Fickling Books in May 2010. It won the Crystal Kite Award for Europe and has since been shortlisted for various prizes including the Blue Peter My Favourite Book Prize and the Waterstone's Children's Book Prize.


When she succumbed to full-time motherhood, Candy avoided doing the dishes by teaching herself code and eventually became a full-fledged web designer. She is fascinated by the power of the web and social media and experiments with blogging, video and podcasting.


Tall Story's paperback cover
She returned to her native Philippines in 2005, to write and present the BBC Radio 4 documentary, Motherless Nation, about the children left behind by migrant workers. The experience inspired her to write two novels, Volcano Child and Ugly City – both of which, she hopes, puts a human face to third world calamity and globalization. Ugly City won a place in SCBWI's first Undiscovered Voices anthology.


Her short story How to Build the Perfect Sandcastle was featured in the Climate Change anthology, Under the Weather (Frances Lincoln, edited by Tony Bradman). She has written a small anthology Animal Tricksters for Oxford University Press. She has also written stories for broadcast on the preschool BBC Channel, Cbeebies.


She is represented by Hilary Delamere of The Agency.


Candy also blogs on candygourlay.blogspot.com
Website: CandyGourlay.com
Tall Story website: TallStory.net







Teri Terry


Teri Terry
Born in France to Dutch-Finnish-Canadian parents, Teri Terry has lived in Canada, Australia and England at more addresses than she can count, acquiring three degrees, a selection of passports and a silly name along the way. Past careers have included scientist, lawyer, optometrist, and, in England, various jobs in secondary schools and promoting literacy to disabled children with an audiobook charity.


She currently divides her time between writing, working in a library, and doing a research MA on the depiction of terrorism in YA literature since 9-11. She has won three writing for children competitions at the Winchester Writers Conference and placed in a half dozen others, and runs a library Chatterbooks group for 8 to 12 year olds, presenting story writing and character development workshops. 


Teri recently won a three-book deal with Orchard Publishing for her young adult thriller, SLATED. Read the joyful news.


Teri is represented by Caroline Sheldon.


Website: teriterry.com/ , facebook page https://www.facebook.com/TeriTerryAuthor , Twitter https://twitter.com/#!/TeriTerryWrites








Maureen Lynas


To Destiny or Death! 
Undiscovered Voice of 2012! 


Maureen Lynas has been sitting on top of her very own Slushpile for a number of years. It's taken dedication to make it so high and so firm but she's very pleased to announce that it seems to be tottering and wobbling a bit at last after winning Undiscovered Voices 






Before taking up residence on her slushpile Maureen was a primary school teacher and author of the Action Words Reading Scheme  which uses a kinaesthetic approach to teaching reading. She’s very proud of Action Words and loves the positive feedback she gets from parents and teachers.


You can see Maureen's funny poetry for kids on The funEverse blog http://www.thefuneverse.com/ a blog by a group of funny poets who met through SCBWI and went on to create a site that brings authors and children together to have a giggle.

Maureen is currently running the North East SCBWI network so that she can have more friends who understand her obsession.

To follow Maureen on Twitter click here 











Addy Farmer 


Addy is a children's writer and former bookseller. She lives in rural North Lincolnshire but that was not always the case. Her random route through life began in Northern Ireland, before moving to Scotland and then many, many places in England until the police finally caught up with her. She gained a massively unhelpful degree in medieval history from London and then went into bookshops, film making and teaching.


Her first published writing was in Northern Short Stories vol. 5. It was a short story called The Devil You Know and was chosen by the wondrous Beryl Bainbridge and David Pownall. The story formed the basis for her supernatural thriller, twelve plus novel, Close to the Bone.


A poem in a Tony Bradman anthology, Look Out! The Teachers are Coming followed in 2007. Then a Walker Story, Grandad's Bench, reviewed by Carousel as, “A heart-warming tale which never steps over the line dividing love from sentimentality."


A picture book, Siddharth and Rinki illustrated by Karin Littlewood was published by Tamarind in 2009, this was also reviewed as "heart warming". Worlds Apart illustrated by Jim Kay, follows in 2012 and is with Frances Lincoln and is probably also quite heart warming. She's hoping that her story about zombie ninjas from outer space may strike a different chord.


So apart from warming people' hearts, Addy also help out with the fabulous SCBWI trying to keep the SCBWI network co-ordinators connected and organising events and meetings as regional co-ordinator for the Central North. She runs a wondrous bed and breakfast which guests never want to leave. She is an occasional special needs teacher and also runs primary creative workshops.


For kicks, Addy likes to fence foil, cycle down hills and cloud spot (she's a fully paid up member of the Cloud Spotters Society) but for her, the biggest kick is writing.


Addy's website: www.addyfarmer.jimdo.com











Jo Wyton


Jo is a writer and a geologist, and loves having two lives she gets to live simultaneously. Her job means that more often than not she’s 40,000 feet above where she should be, so most of her writing is done whilst trying not to viciously elbow that man sitting next to her in the ribs. On the plus side, her job is to picture the world as it looked millions of years ago, so her imagination gets daily training. She also occasionally helps out at the local bookshop, which she hopes to steal the deeds for someday.

After spending countless years writing books for Middle Grade, Jo realised she wasn’t a Middle Grade writer at all, and has since enjoyed writing novels for Young Adults. She recently won Undiscovered Voices 2012 along with 12 others, and amidst a packed launch party was incredibly lucky to find agent Molly Ker Hawn, who is almost as barmy as she is. Almost. She also blogs at http://jowyton.blogspot.com/ when Candy puts the whip down.


Photo: Christian Colussi

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