Samantha Tidy is a Western Australian writer, currently living in Canberra, Australia.

She has lived in lots of different places, like Perth, Paris, London, Dublin, Galway, Hamelin Bay, Wyalkatchem, Melbourne, Halls Creek, Broome...but she has always thought of Fremantle as home, no matter where she chooses to live in the world.

Samantha writes adult and children's fiction, and freelances as a non-fiction writer occasionally for newspapers and magazines.

She compliments her writing with a career in museum education - which is where she gets to find out about some of the more interesting stories in Australian history, that inspire her writing.

From February to May, 2008 she was the recipient of a research scholarship to study at the Bibliothéque nationale de France (The National Library of France) in Paris. You can read the finished Carnet de Voyage of her adventures in Paris (or what you might just call a plain old blog), at:

http://my.opera.com/Samanthatidy/blog/

For other up to date news click here.

A Brief History...

When she was in year five, Samantha's parents took her to see the musical Cats. After that, she spent a lot of time reading the original poems of T.S. Eliot (A bit geeky for a ten year old, she does admit). Samantha then wrote a poem about a cat. She thought it was so good, that she carried it around in her pocket and read it people who were never really that interested. Even her teacher didn't really care for it. That was when she decided a) she wanted to be a writer and find more things to write about than just cats, and b) to become a teacher, and encourage other budding writers to write.

Despite the lack of encouragement by her teacher, Samantha did keep writing, and in her first year of being an English teacher at the age of 21, she had written her first novel, called The Goodbye Kisses. Another writer encouraged her to enter it into the TAG Hungerford Award for Fiction, in 2000. She did, and she came Runner Up.

Samantha retitled that novel, and published it as Cappuccino Diva in 2003, and a year later, published a non-fiction text If I Ran Australia in 2004.

In October 2004, Samantha participated in the Inaugural Ubud Writers' and Readers' Festival, in Bali, Indonesia, where she presented a workshop, and gave readings of her first novel.
 
In 2005 Samantha was commissioned by the NSW Government to write two children's picture books, The Flying Dream (illustrated by Connah Brecon) and The Blue Polar Bear (illustrated by Ian Forss)  which were published in January 2006, by the Department of Community Services, NSW. Both books have a current circulation of around 30,000 each.

These two texts help children understand when a parent has Dual Diagnosis (Mental illness, combined with Substance Abuse). The project won a major trans-Tasman award (Mental Health Service, Australia/New Zealand - Gold Award for promotion of Mental Health) and a highly commended in the 2006 NSW Premier's Public Sector Awards.

Along the way, Samantha has also freelanced in writing non-fiction for magazines and newspapers, with articles published in Australia, Ireland and Indonesia, and commissioned pieces for major international publishers such as Dorling Kindersley, UK.

A selection of published works can be read on the writing page.

Samantha has just completed her Masters in Creative Writing at The University of RMIT, Melbourne, with a focus on "Created Heavens in Contemporary Literature", predominantly The Lovely Bones, by Alice Sebold, and The Five People You Meet in Heaven, by Mitch Albom. (Last year, Samantha interviewed Mitch Albom in person for the purposes of this degree, on his trip to Australia).

Samantha still writes, but she hasn't written any poems about cats for a long time (and doesn't really write poems that often either). She has just finished a rather big novel that took 6 years to write. She hopes to share this with you soon.

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From late 2007, this website is being recorded for prosperity in the Pandora archive, by The State Library of Western Australia.

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