About Teresa Lawrence

Younger writer me…

When I was little, I always seemed to be drawing…sometimes, I would write too. My teachers would always want to read my stories to the class, which was fine until I was a teenager, then it was just embarrassing. The adults around me were always telling me how clever I was at drawing and writing, especially drawing. Naturally,  I loved hearing this so I kept doing it. But it wasn’t just the praise that kept me going, I had the feeling that I’d been given something special and I wanted to do something with it.

After a short, bumpy career as a copywriter in advertising, I returned to uni to study Textile Design at RMIT, trying to be practical . Here I found that I just preferred the drawing to the textile designing and didn’t complete the degree. Not long after leaving RMIT, my daughter Tess was born. When she was still a baby (she’s now 26!) I did a short course in illustration. Then I put together a folio of drawings and got lots of inspiration from the books I read to her. In time, I went for an interview at a publishing house as the Art Director’s Assistant. I didn’t get the job but I made it onto the list of freelancers, which led to my first book.

That book was called Rosie’s House. It was about a boy who built a new house for his guinea pig, Rosie. The cover’s on the My Books page.

I’ve since illustrated nearly 100 children’s books, the covers of some I’ve posted here on the My Books page. Between textile design and all the books I illustrated, I’ve done lots more study. I now have an Arts Degree, a Diploma of Visual Culture and a teaching qualification too.