My second illustrated picture book is now available worldwide!
Written by Booker Prize winner Shehan Karunatilaka, ‘The Ant Who Walked to The Edge of The World’ is out now on Papaya Books. You can browse their growing collection (and maybe buy ‘Ant’ pretty please?) here!
They’ve got a couple of collections going at the moment: the bright and bold Baby Baba series for tiny tots illustrated by my husband Lalith, and the Nature series for slightly more mature kids growing curious about the world around them. ‘Ant’, a story about adventurous bugs, fits in neatly alongside ‘Those Sneaky Plants’, a tale of mutinous plant life, imagined from the way plants really do communicate with each other and illustrated by Roo Amarasinghe.
In other news, I’m exploring what’s next in my illustration career. I did try out for WIA this year but was sadly unsuccessful — you win some, you lose some! More applications have gone out — some were a miss, but I’ve got my fingers crossed. Hopefully I’ll have something more substantial to report in the coming weeks. Trying out a submission for the Northern Illustration Prize, but whether I make the deadline in two days’ time is yet to be seen!
Oh, and I turned 40! It scares me, to be honest, because I’m starting over with a new career and yet I’m twice as old as I was when I last did this. The only difference was, at 20, I knew I could write. At 40, I know that I am an illustrator. I was made for this.
OK — geriatric millennial affirmations over… for now.