Author Jill Atkins gives a talk about getting published: the successes, the failures and the processes.

Jill Atkins has been writing for children for thirty years. Her books range from historical fiction to workbooks on spelling and phonics, from fiction to non-fiction, from teenage novels to early readers.

In February, Storrington museum will be welcoming Jill to learn about her life as a writer and how writing for children differs from writing for adults (it isn’t easier!). The talk is about getting published: the successes, the failures and the processes. She will discuss editing and illustration, as well as writing.

Jill began telling stories to her two younger brothers when she was quite a young girl. Later, while she was teaching infants, she realised that the ‘reading books’ the children in her class were reading were very dull so she decided to write her own. Whilst not published, these were a useful tool in the classroom.
She moved on from teaching to run a B&B establishment with her husband. This gave her more time to write and led to her breakthrough first children’s book: Cooking with Rabbit!

And now? Two hundred books later, Jill is still writing!