Member Spotlight: Gabrielle Wang

3.05.22

Our May Member Spotlight features Gabrielle Wang, who was recently named the Australian Children's Laureate 2022-23! 

Gabrielle Wang is an award-winning author and illustrator, and the Australian Children's Laureate for 2022 to 2023. Born in Melbourne of Chinese heritage, her maternal great-grandfather came to Victoria during the Gold Rush and her father was from Shanghai. Her stories are a blend of Chinese and Western culture with a touch of fantasy.

Image credit: State Library Victoria - James Braund

What inspired you to begin writing and illustrating?

All my life I loved drawing so in my twenties I decided to write and illustrate a picture book. I sent it off to several publishers but it was rejected. I knew very little about submitting work because the internet was not around back then and there wasn’t the support that there is today. So I gave up my dream of ever being published. It wasn’t until many years later when my children were in primary school, that I had a dream one night which would change the course of my life forever. Throughout my childhood I had been ashamed of being Chinese. I couldn’t speak the language and knew nothing about Chinese culture. Racial prejudice was rife. Then I went to live in Taiwan and China for seven years to learn Chinese language and painting. Being immersed in the culture in this way finally made me proud of my heritage. The dream was significant because it took me back to my childhood and was filled with Chinese imagery. The next day I wrote the dream down and as I was writing, it turned into a short story full of magic. I was so surprised as I had never written prose before. I never thought I could write. But I didn’t know what to do with it so I put it away. It was picture books that I was still interested in. The following year, I enrolled in a writing subject to learn more about how to write and submit a picture book. Our teacher was the wonderful children’s author, Hazel Edwards. In the first semester we learnt about picture books. Then, when it came to the second semester, Hazel said we were going to work on a junior novel. I wasn’t interested so I decided to discontinue the subject. But when I got home, I thought that the only way to improve oneself was to be brave, to venture into new and foreign lands. So even though this was a huge challenge I decided to keep going. Just as well I did too, because that short story I wrote after my dream, that I then worked on in Hazel’s class, became my first novel, The Garden of Empress Cassia.

What does it mean to you to have been named the new Australian Children's Laureate?

I feel extremely fortunate to hold this role for the next two years. I have a platform to speak to children, teachers, parents, booksellers and other industry professionals about the things that I love -  the importance of diversity in children’s literature, the importance of our imagination and how we need to keep it strong, the importance of reading and writing, and lastly, the importance of art, a skill that I believe should be encouraged all the way through primary school into adulthood.

What do you know now that you wish you'd known at the beginning of your author/illustrator career?

That there is a wonderful, warm, joyous, funny and supportive community of Australian children’s writers and illustrators so I needn’t have felt scared. That the journey is a long and twisty one, and in the beginning more doors seem to close than open until one day a big door does open and the room is filled with shooting stars. That rejections are a right of passage. That you never stop learning the art of storytelling or illustrating no matter how many books you write or draw. That rejections from many does not necessarily mean that there isn’t that one publisher out there who will connect with your story which is what happened with The Garden of Empress Cassia. That it doesn’t matter how old you are when you start. That writing is equal parts talent, timing and luck.

Which Australian authors or illustrators have been influential on your author/illustrator career?

My mother was an avid reader too and bought me lots of books. Among the many that I still have today are The Silver Brumby by Elyne Mitchell, Tiger in the Bush by Nan Chauncy and The Little Green Road to Fairyland by Ida Rentoul Outhwaite. The illustrations in this last book are sublime and as a child, I would copy them over and over again. When I was starting out on my writing career, I remember reading Odo Hirsh’s Hazel Green series voraciously and all of Sonya Hartnett’s books and Margo Lanagan’s short stories. I admired illustrators such as Ron Brooks, Andrew McLean, Peter Pavey and Alison Lester.

The most influential author though was Hazel Edwards. Hazel was the one who had faith in me, who kept encouraging me to keep sending my work out even though my letterbox was full of rejection letters. I was lucky. Every author needs a mentor like Hazel.

Learn more about Gabrielle at https://gabriellewang.com/