About Penny Reeve
Penny Reeve is the author of more than 25 books for children, including picture books, novels and non-fiction. She has a masters degree in writing and literature and is a PhD candidate researching spiritual questioning in young adult fiction. Penny loves sharing her stories with children and encouraging them to respond to the complex, fascinating and sometimes difficult world we live in.
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Penny has always had a love of story and as a child was an avid reader with an active imagination. Some of her favourite books were Enid Blyton's Children at Cherry Tree Farm, the Elizabeth Gail and Trixie Beldon series and picture books like Each Peach Pear Plum. She grew up in a variety of cross cultural environments, including Arnhem Land (Northern Territory, Australia), Bangladesh and Papua New Guinea and although she was forever telling her brothers stories in the car and wishing she could be an author, she never really believed it would happen.
The result of this was many pages of teenage poetry, a collection of short stories and started novels and several friends who ended up with piles of hand written letters from various locations around the globe! At the end of high school Penny trained to become a primary school teacher and, after getting married and graduating, she went to live and teach, in PNG for a year. It was after this, and while her first child was still a baby, that Penny decided to try to write for publication and she began submitting manuscripts for children's books. The first book accepted was God Made Something Big, which was published by Christian Focus Publications UK as God Made Something Strong in 2002. (Those interested in more writerly details can pop over here for more information about the journey to publication.) Between 2001 and 2006 Penny and her family lived in Nepal, where they supported the work of an international non-government health and development organisation. This was the location and inspiration behind the book, Himalayan Adventures. Penny now lives with her husband and three children in western Sydney, Australia. She has a Master of Arts in Creative Writing and Literature (Deakin University) and is a PhD candidate researching spiritual questions in YA fiction. Penny was an Anglican Deaconess Ministries senior research fellow in 2022 and enjoys juggling a busy family life with several writing projects on the go! She also writes as Penny Jaye and Ella Shine. |
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Penny is a member of AWSA, Omega Writers, the ASA and the CBCA NSW Branch.