How did this network come about?

Clare: We all knew each other, either from working together in the past, or meeting at conferences, or just from using and promoting each other’s books. When you write in this field, you’re always interested in what else is available, and trying to let other teachers know about it. Sometimes I’d be talking to librarians or teachers about my own materials, and I’d say, ‘Well, have you seen Carly and Kumar?’ or ‘Have you seen Koala and Wombat?’ and I’m sure the others were doing the same thing.

I’d worked with Carmel years ago, in a refugee camp in Thailand – I’d worked with Maggie on Distance Learning materials – I’d asked Susan for advice before I started my self-publishing journey – I kept an eye out for Hazel and Dorothy’s books – and Karen and I met regularly to support each other. Oh, yes, and I’d met Sharon at a conference, when she did a terrific presentation on Sing with Me. So when Hazel suggested we do something a little more formal, it seemed a perfect opportunity…

 

How did we start on our individual writing and publishing journeys?

Clare: I think most English language teachers are also writers – but some of us are lucky enough to be asked to work on local or national projects, or we have ideas that seem too big for just our class. If you’ve been in this field for a while, you’ll remember NCELTR – the National Centre for English Language Teaching and Research, at Macquarie University. They provided direction to the whole AMEP, they published both research and teaching materials – and again, I was lucky enough to work for them on some national Distance Learning projects. Then they invited me to write half of a reader – and I just went from there…

At the same time, I was also approaching other publishers – I had a couple of Starter Readers published with Macmillan UK (it was the Heinemann Reader series then) and my fabulous writing colleague Maureen Hague and I wrote a spelling book for Heinemann Australia (alas now out of print). I’ve sold short stories to school magazines and women’s magazines, but the only ‘novels’ I’ve written have been ELT ones, including some e-books on my website.

When NCELTR stopped publishing, I realised that all my ideas were going to go nowhere unless I did something about it myself. I still had the manuscripts for The Coat and Can you keep a Secret? – readers that they had planned to publish –  and I wondered if I could do this myself?

The answer was yes, but it took me a long time to make it happen, and I’m hugely appreciative of the language bookshops and of all the colleagues who helped me with reading or editing or just encouragement…