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Sheryl Gwyther is a Queensland children’s author who writes novels, school plays, chapter books and magazine articles. When she was a child, Sheryl found a piece of 95 million-year-old fossil near her Queensland outback home. It fired her imagination about Australia’s prehistoric past. Years later, it provided the setting for her children’s adventure novel, Secrets of Eromanga as well an amazing stint volunteering on an outback dinosaur fossil dig.

Sheryl was awarded two Australian Society of Authors’ Mentorships in 2002 and 2009, and was a recipient of a May Gibbs Children’s Literature Trust Fellowship in 2008. Her work appears in children’s magazines, Explore and Comet, The School Magazine and the NZ schools’ Junior Journal. Sheryl also loves enthusing kids about books, the world of writing and sometimes even Australian dinosaurs at school and library appearances.


When did you first know you wanted to be a writer?

I remember pretending (at aged 10) to be a journalist and interviewing the milkman and the rubbish man up in my far north Queensland town. I think I was more impressed with having a spiral bound notebook like a real journalist would have, rather than the content.

When I was an early childhood teacher, I loved telling stories to the kids, and getting them to imagine and write their own. Finally, in 2000 I got serious about my own writing.



What was your road to publication like?

Haha, like everyone else’s! Rejection after rejection – but I know now those stories were NOT ready to submit. I didn’t stick with one story, I kept writing many different things. One story – set on a fossil dig in outback Queensland, I entered into the Australian Society of Authors Mentorship Program in 2002, and blow me down I got one. It was a great experience and I learned a lot about writing from my mentor, author, Sue Gough.

Two years later, after many rewrites, Lothian Books (now Hachette Australia) published Secrets of Eromanga – an adventure with fossil smugglers, kids by themselves in the outback woven with the life story of an ornithopod dinosaur who lived 95 million years ago. The story has done well – it’s in lots of school libraries, although I think it’s now out of print. Hachette have made it into an e-book. I’ve spoken to many children about the book and about Australia’s amazing dinosaur history. My second ASA Mentorship in 2009, was with Sally Rippin, working on my story, McAlpine & Macbeth.
A great experience too!


Your children's books cover a wide range of subjects. Where do your ideas come from?

From everywhere – things I hear or read, or remember. Princess Clown (and my current WIP, Fangus Fearbottom) began as a challenge to write a story based on two ill-matched words like clown and princess, and banana and fang. Lots of fun!

Can you please tell us about your books.

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