Award-winning children’s author Pip Harry tells Peninsula Living about her writing life and love for words.
Allambie local Pip Harry says she was ‘destined’ to be a writer from a young age. Pip, 49, was a voracious reader growing up in Melbourne.
“I remember reading by torchlight. I was one of those kids,” Pip tells Peninsula Living. “I got into Judy Blume and Australian writers.”
Pip loved to write. “I just enjoyed telling stories,” she says. “And it wasn’t until high school that I realised I was good at it and that it might be a potential career path.”
After finishing school, Pip worked in journalism. And it was a magazine job that brought her to Sydney. She enjoyed writing for magazines, but fiction was on her mind.
“When I turned 30, it felt like a milestone birthday. I realised that I had turned my back on this dream, this passion to write for children,” says Pip. “For so many years, I was climbing the ladder at magazines. I had got to the top of that ladder and took a look around and thought, ‘this is not what I really want to be doing’.”
Fast forward almost 20 years, and Pip is now an award-winning children’s writer. She won the Children’s Book Council of Australia (CBCA) Book of the Year Award in 2020 for her fourth book Little Wave and most recently won CBCA Shadow Judging Book of the Year 2023 for August & Jones.
August & Jones was inspired by a story Pip read about two children
aged 10 in Victoria. “Mathilda became a guide for a young boy called Jarrah, who had lost his sight due to eye cancer,” Pip tells Peninsula Living. “She had learnt braille and she used to wear this rainbow scarf in the playground so that he could see her because his sight was starting to fail. They had this really special bond.”
Pip thought it would make a good story for a children’s book. The two children in August & Jones make a bucket list and go on many adventures.
“They’re both facing difficult years,” explains Pippa. “Jones with her health, and August has family problems.”
Pip likes to play with gender stereotypes. In August & Jones, the boy knits and reads, and the girl enjoys rock climbing.
“I’ve done it before where the boy had an eating disorder and was body conscious, and the girl didn’t,” says Pip. “I like writing girl characters who are very tough and uncompromising.”
Pip is on the committee for the Northern Beaches chapter of the Children’s Book Council of Australia. “We do lots of events and meet-ups,” said Pip. “It’s wonderful to have that sense of community in the children’s book world.”
In 2022, she was a Northern Beaches young writer’s competition judge, run by council. “That was just incredible,” she said. “All these young writers creating beautiful stories. I felt very lucky to be a judge.”
“There’s a sense that the Northern Beaches cares about writing and books and stories. So I’m in the right place!”