HNSA’s podcast Imagining the Past is back for another series in 2021. In this week’s episode, G.S. Johnston is joined by CYA author Susanne Gervay. Susanne discuss her new time-slip novel, Heroes of the Secret Underground, migration, sculpting stories from WWII for CYA, and Pálinka.
Awarded the Lifetime Social Justice Literature Award by the International Literacy Association, Order of Australia, nominee for Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, and as the child of refugees, Susanne is committed to empowering young people through story.
Susanne’s young adult books reach into the search for identity, from the second rise of feminism in Shadows of Olive Trees, and sexual consent in The Cave, through to disability in Butterflies and empowering youth to become heroes in Heroes of the Secret Underground. Her younger I Am Jack series (bullying), Butterflies (disability), Shadows of Olive Trees (historical novel on second rise of feminism), books have become rites-of-passage on school bullying.
Committed to the children’s book industry, Susanne heads the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (ANZ), is patron of Monkey Baa Theatre, and ambassador of Room to Read.
Susanne Gervay at HNSA’s 2021 Virtual Conference
Susanne Gervay will join HNSA at our 2021 virtual conference on the panel The Indescribable Truth: Introducing the Holocaust to Young Readers.
The horror of the Holocaust continues to shock generations who question how such unfathomable evil could have existed, and hope the call for ‘never again’ is heeded. When is the ‘right’ time to expose a young reader to the Shoah? And how does a writer tread the tightrope between triggering nightmares or awareness? Susanne Gervay and Dee White, answer these questions in discussion with Diane Murray.
With the HNSA 2021 Virtual Conference being hosted virtually for the very first time, HNSA has created its most extensive conference program to date. Join us over two weekends between 16 to 24 October to celebrate historical fiction with panels, interviews, workshops, bootcamps and so much more. Recorded sessions will remain accessible to registrants for three months after the event. Subscribe to our newsletter to stay up to date with conference news and announcements about the 2021 ARA Historical Novel Prize.
