Our Team
Meet the team #LoveOzYA Team
Committee
Kate Eltham – Chair
Kate has been reading Australian YA since she fell in love with the books of Ivan Southall and Gary Crew at age 11. Kate’s previous roles have included CEO of Queensland Writers Centre, Manager of Reading and Writing at the State Library of Queensland and Festival Director of Brisbane Writers Festival, where she established LoveYA!, a free all-day celebration of YA fiction. She is currently Business Development Manager for the Creative Industries Faculty at QUT.
Twitter: @kate_eltham
Alice Boer-Endacott – Secretary
Under the name A B Endacott, Alice is the author of several YA fantasy books. Under the name Alice, she is a teacher and researcher; she is currently completing her PhD investigating how the books people read inform their sense of identity.
In addition to being the Secretary for LoveOzYA, she is the Alice behind our monthly industry-focused column, Ask Alice.
Twitter: @ajendacott
Instagram: @alicejaneboere
Renee Fletcher – Deputy Chair
Renee is completing a Bachelor in Professional Writing and Publishing and is currently working as a marketing associate. When she’s not studying, working or reading she’s helping the community with her local SES Unit by climbing on roofs, wrangling trees and helping the public prepare for storms and other natural disasters. She has a dog named Frank and spends more time at the beach than might be considered necessary.
Twitter: @reneejoan94
Bianca Breen – Communications Director
Bianca has a Bachelor of Creative Arts (Writing) from La Trobe University and works at The Literature Centre in Fremantle, WA. She practically lives on social media, nerding out over books, which is appropriate because as Communications Director she nerds out over books with a strong and passionate team of #LoveOzYA volunteers on social media.
Instagram: @biancabreen
Dayna Smith
In Year 8, Dayna decided she wanted to read the entire school library before she finished Year 12. Alas, that dream was never achieved, and Dayna is a now public librarian in Queensland where she enjoys browsing a much bigger library. Like Hermione Granger, she believes that most problems can be helped, if not solved, by a trip to the library. She spends her time organising exciting events to give people a reason to visit their local library and wishes she knew what cool places public libraries were when she was a teenager.
Instagram: @d_li_ght
Jared Thomas
Bio coming soon
Amelia Hearn
Amelia is a digital strategist with twelve years’ experience, but her first loves are reading and writing. When she was little, her mother would read aloud to her from whatever novel she was reading, and Amelia has been avidly devouring stories of all kinds ever since. She has a Bachelor of Creative Industries in creative writing, and writes young adult fiction.
Content Team
Kelsey Mahoney
Kelsey has a Bachelor Arts and a Bachelor of Business from Monash University and is completing a Masters in Creative Writing, Publishing and Editing at University of Melbourne. On the days she’s not studying, she’s working in a bookshop. To this day, her family jokes that she won’t do anything before she finishes the chapter she’s reading.
Emma Holifield
Originally from rural England, Emma has ended up in Sydney via China, Taiwan and a dairy farm in regional Victoria. Studying an English Literature degree made her sure she wanted to work with books, moving into marketing roles at Hachette UK and now HarperCollins Children’s Books Australia. She has a passion for reading and writing Young Adult fiction, with a particular love of rebellious crews and enemies to lovers.
Instagram: @emmaholifieldbooks
Stassi Austin
Stassi is a proud Ngemba woman, advocate, storyteller and passionate life-long reader, currently living on Wiradjuri Country. A homeschool graduate, Stassi is working towards the completion of a Bachelor of Information Studies (Librarianship) at Charles Sturt University and is passionate about improving access to literary and educational spaces for rural and regional people.
Instagram: @stassiaustin
Julia Faragher
Bio coming soon
Poppy Solomon
From her home on the Sunshine Coast, Poppy Rose Solomon freelances as a YA editor and coach through her business Poppy’s Pages, and runs the Writing YA With Poppy podcast. Her own YA novels reflect the traumas and hard lessons she went through as a teenager, and she loves creating ‘unlikable’ characters who learn to heal themselves. Evoking inspiration and escapism is the goal of her storytelling. Woken Kingdom is her first series.