Little Jiang

Katy Jiang, also known as Hong Jiang (江泓), was born, raised and educated in Shanghai, China. From a young age, Katy learned traditional Chinese ink painting. Later, she studied Western painting directed by Chinese artist, illustrator and art educator Chen Youqun. She excelled at still-life drawing, figure painting, Chinese ink painting and Chinese Baimiao drawing. Katy also has a bachelor’s degree in interior design, but after she immigrated to Australia in 2006, she quit design and returned to art and illustration. Katy lives in Fremantle, Western Australia, with her husband and two boys. Since she joined the SCBWI West in 2017, she has contributed her artistic talent and knowledge to create children’s picture books.

Shirley Marr is a first-generation Chinese-Australian living in Perth and an author of young adult and children's fiction, including YA novels Fury and Preloved, and children’s novels Little Jiang and A Glasshouse of Stars. She describes herself as having a Western mind and an Eastern heart. She likes to write in the space in the middle where they both collide, basing her stories on her own personal experiences of migration and growing up in Australia, along with the folk and fairy tales from her mother. Arriving in mainland Australia from Christmas Island as a seven-year-old in the 1980s and experiencing the good, the bad and the wonder that comes with culture shock, Shirley has been in love with reading and writing from that early age. Shirley is a universe full of stars and stories and hopes to share the many other novels that she has inside her.