Biography
Samantha Tidy is a Western Australian writer, currently living in Sydney, Australia.
She has lived in lots of different places, like Perth, Paris, London, Dublin, Canberra, 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 for newspapers and magazines, as well as helping others find their way in the world of writing and publishing.
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 to 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 T.A.G. Hungerford Award for Fiction, in 2000. She did, and she came Runner Up.
Samantha retitled that novel, and it was published as Cappuccino Diva in 2003 by Black Coffee Press. 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 has been commissioned to write pieces for major international publishers such as Dorling Kindersley, UK.
In 2009, Samantha completed her Masters in Creative Writing at The University of RMIT, Melbourne, titled "In Heaven as it is on Earth: Created Heavens in Contemporary Literature, focussing on The Lovely Bones, by Alice Sebold."
Samantha writes a lot, 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.