Stef Gemmill
Stef Gemmill is the award-winning author of several children’s books including A Home for Luna, Toy Mountain and In My Dreams – books that champion issues that matter such as homelessness, resilience, disability and caring for the environment. A Home for Luna won the 2020 International Rubery Book Award for its unique story of a refugee cat finding family with a huddle of penguins. While researching for her middle-grade novel, The Ghost Horse of Snowy River, Stef rode a stockhorse for 3-days camping overnight in the High Country, which must be her most fun sleepover to-date.
Stef Gemmill’s interactive presentations take readers behind the scenes of her books, from what inspired them to how they were made, and bringing them to life through scene acting and games with audience participation. While her creative writing workshops seek to unlock the stories lying within all of us through practical exercises and fun prompts.
Stef writes stories that reduce stereotypes and increase understanding of diversity, refugees, persons with disability, environmental challenges and understanding where you belong in the world. These are not the focus of the story, but rather, the characters simply live with these things, and are the heroes—having adventures, living their lives and solving problems, big and small.
Preschoolers to Prep – 30 min sessions
A Home for Luna Storytime
Character point of view
Stef’s story time and scene recreation through drama is a highly inclusive and educational experience for younger ages. She reads from her award-winning book, A Home for Luna and encourages children to discuss the plot and characters and act out scenes in a fun and engaging way.
Grade 1 to 3 – 50-60 min sessions
Story Sparks
Story plot, character, emotions and the five senses
Stef’s entertaining author talks include reading one of her published books and including the students in discussion on key scenes, themes, plot and character. This discussion leads into how students’ personal experiences may spark a story idea.
Stef will also develop story seeds with students through a ‘five senses’ discovery workshop.
This entertaining and interactive session is suitable for larger groups.
Grade 4 to 6 – 50-60 min sessions
Memorable Characters
How character emotions and personal experiences spark story ideas
Stef engages with this older age group by creating workshopping memorable characters and what challenges they might face that would drive a story narrative. She encourages group discussions on character’s different points of views and how personal experiences help you write story.
Students then workshop their own story seed using their memorable character in smaller groups. They will create a story arc vis a ‘comic strip’ template. These can be used in class as story seeds for their curriculum work.
This entertaining and interactive session is suitable for larger groups.
Year 7 to Year 9 - 50-60 min sessions
Survival Stories
How personal experiences can make believable stories
Stef shares her experience researching for her novel, The Ghost Horse of Snowy River, and how she camped out in the High Country with stockhorse, Jimmy, for 3-days.
Tapping into their own experiences in the outdoors, students will out together a survival ‘backpack’ and write a short story on how they would survive in the wilderness for 3-days alone.
Poetry for the Stage and the Page
Finding your creative flow
Stef engages with this older age group by looking at different types of verse and poetry and how it is ‘way cooler’ than they can imagine. Think slam poetry, Hip-Hop and Rap music.
The students will deep dive into how poetry let’s off ‘steam and emotion’ and how to find creative flow. Students will try their hand at verse poetry to create their own poems.
Testimonials
Stef was incredible! She got the whole year of students excited about story writing while sneaking in school curriculum in her writing workshop section. You’ve set my whole class up with great story plots for our Term 3 curriculum. I am impressed how you managed to get every student involved.
Dingley Primary SchoolAll the students loved Stef’s story workshops and we now have some very enthusiastic young authors at Lisieux. Her presentations and workshops were pitched at the perfect level for each age group. The Foundations got on board with acting out scenes from A Home for Luna and Stef had complete control over this activity. She also had the older students enthused about creating imaginative stories with her visual story seed workshop where they all had a chance to contribute to some terrific story ideas. Even the most reluctant contributors were onboard. She is a master at creating a sense of fun and passion around stories.
Lisieux Catholic Primary SchoolStef completed a Book Week Author in Residence in 2019 over three full days with the entire school. Stef did a wonderful job of keeping all children engaged in age-appropriate workshops from the littlest Foundation student to the soon to be graduating Grade 6's. The teachers loved how she linked many of the story writing workshop elements to their current curriculum. We look forward to welcoming Stef back again soon
Bellbrae Primary School
The Ghost Horse of Snowy River
Toy Mountain
In My Dreams
A home for luna
Victoria
Speaker type
- Author
- Poet
- Non-fiction
Audience
- Preschool
- Prep - Year 2
- Year 3-6
- Year 7-9
- Adult