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Melissa Garside

Published

2025

Date of Success:

Melissa Garside is a writer, teacher and certifiable word nerd with a lifelong love of language. This love has taken her to remote islands, medieval cities and ancient alpine fortresses. It once even landed her a job as a tour bus driver for a helicopter company. Melissa lives in a rural town south of Sydney, where she enjoys the company of her family, their free-ranging chooks and one hilarious golden retriever.

 

Melissa's debut junior fiction book, Lexie Moon & The Word Burgling Bungle, is available now from Riveted Press.

WHAT CYA CONFERENCE DID FOR ME

I’ve been fortunate enough to attend the CYA Conference several times since 2020 after it was recommended to me at a manuscript assessment at Writing NSW. The conference has always been informative and inspiring, and a wonderful opportunity to get together with the fabulous folks from the Kid Lit community. Since my first CYA Conference, I’ve attended countless talks and workshops, as well as participating in bootcamps, assessments and the competition.

 

In 2023, at the suggestion of my critique group buddy, Matt Samuel, I booked an assessment with Rowena Beresford from Riveted Press, who gave me some great feedback, and asked me to make some revisions and submit the complete manuscript. That assessment has now resulted in the publication of my debut junior fiction book, Lexie Moon & The Word Burgling Bungle.

 

The Success Panel has always been one of my favourite features of the conference, mostly because it showed me that getting published was not impossible. To be able to be included amongst its successes has been a dream for me since my first CYA Conference and now I am happy to say it is a dream come true. CYA has been a major part in my development as a writer and has played a key role in my path to publication. So thank you so much, Tina and the CYA team for all of the work you do!

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