Dawn Meredith trained as a secondary school Art and English teacher, and eventually realised special education was her passion.
With over twenty years’ experience working in schools and privately, Dawn enjoys helping students with learning difficulties to develop literacy skills, enjoy reading and find self-expression through their own writing. Dawn also tutors HSC English and runs writing workshops for schools and libraries.
In 2010 and 2011, Dawn was awarded a May Gibbs Literature Trust Fellowship. In 2012 she was awarded a ‘Highly Commended’ Adult Writer of Fantasy/Sci-fi in the ‘Writing Classes for Kids’ competition. Dawn was a guest author at BOOKFEAST in Sydney in 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012.
Dawn has been a bookworm all her life and a little embarrassed to admit she collected stamps as a child. She also enjoys travelling to foreign countries, especially Great Britain, where she was born. When she was twelve, Dawn’s family moved to Norway to live on an island.
Dawn loves animals and with her husband has two border collies, a cat and a horse. Dawn’s hobbies and interests include drawing, photography, bushwalking, noodling around on the piano and gardening. She is incurably mad about robots and dragons, and loves gadgets. Writing books for children is the easiest way to get all those weird ideas out of her head and Dawn loves it when readers enjoy her stories.
Published work:
- Tony Lockett for the Livewires True Lives series by Cambridge Uni Press 2000
- Don Bradman for the Livewires True Lives series by Cambridge Uni Press 2000
- The Wobbly Wombat by Pearson/Rigby 2007
- Short stories, poems and non-fiction pieces for Blueprints series by Pearson/Rigby in the units: ‘Think Globally’, ‘Forever Friends’, ‘Beginnings’, ‘Machines’ in 2007 and 2008
- Red Hot Writing Ideas years 7-10, vol. 3 & 4 by Blake Education, 2008
- The Lonely Tree for ‘Books for Fiji’ project, 2009
- Fat Abby, Feline Investigator by Sunshine Press, 2010
- Hopscotch by Jellybean Publishing, 2011
- The Anything Shop by Wombat Books, 2011
In adult writing, Dawn has been published in magazines such as New Idea, Dog’s Life, Australasian Record and Adventist Review, (a Christian magazine) for which she won an award.
Dawn offers talks and workshops which encourage kids, especially boys, to get into books and express themselves more clearly with their own writing.