One of this country’s biggest stars in the world of children’s books will be travelling to the isles for Shetland Arts’ Wordplay 2006 Book Festival.

Debi Gliori is the author illustrator of more than forty picture books for children. She is best known for her Mr Bear series (Orchard), which has sold over 1.5 million copies worldwide in territories from Japan to America, and the latest title, Mr Bear’s Holiday, won the Scottish Arts Council Children’s Book Award in 2000. While in Shetland Debi Gliori will be giving a talk for adults on how to break into the world of writing for illustrating for children, and delighting bairns with a zany event entitled ‘A present for Old Bat: What would you buy an old bat for her 146th birthday present?’.

She trained at Edinburgh College of Art, at the end of which she received a travelling scholarship and went to Milan to soak up Italian design. Since then Debi has freelanced as an illustrator, initially in advertising, and for the last 12 years working exclusively in publishing.

For the most part Debi works in watercolour, preferring that medium above all others for its luminous colours and ability to convey light by means of painting many transparent washes of colour, one on top of the other, building up a kind of ‘glow’. She says “I’ve never been able to work from photographs, and much prefer to find my images in my imagination and memory. I’m hugely inspired by watching and listening to my tribe of children, and most of what I do is based on and around their lives and dreams and hopes.”

Debi has a purpose-built studio in her back garden, having tried, unsuccessfully, to combine working on the kitchen table with raising a family! She needs the silence and lack of distractions in this private place in order to concentrate on what she is doing.

In the tiny amounts of spare time that she can claw back from a rather crammed life, she loves cooking and gardening, but she’s always tended to look a tad embarrassed if asked what her hobbies are, “since I don’t appear to have any...”

“We are delighted that Debi Gliori is coming to Shetland,” says Shetland Arts Literature Development Officer Alex Cluness. “She is a magical talent and will be one of the stars of the festival. She is part of a long tradition of great artists in children’s publishing to visit Wordplay that began with Vivian French in 2002 and saw the huge success of Julia Donaldson and The Gruffalo last year.”

Her collaborations with Joyce Dunbar have produced the best-selling Tell Me Something Happy Before I Go To Sleep, and The Very Small. Her popular picture book Penguin Post was published in September 2002 and was followed by a collaboration, Always and Forever, with Alan Durant in September 2003. This title has recently been shortlisted for the Kate Greenaway Medal. Debi’s next picture book, Where Did That Baby Come From was published in September 2004.

Debi’s debut novel, Pure Dead Magic, is a gothic romp of a novel featuring the weird and wonderful Strega-Borgia family including Damp the baby, a tarantula who wears lipstick and some baby rats who are accidentally sent into cyberspace through the email system. The series continues with Pure Dead Wicked, Pure Dead Brilliant, Deep Trouble and Deep Water, which was published in June 2005 and brought us more adventures of the madcap Strega-Borgia family.

Deep Water was shortlisted for the Royal Mail Awards for Scottish Children's Books 2005.

Shetland Arts Wordplay 2006 festival will take place 8-10 September, in the Clickimin Leisure Complex, Lerwick. The festival is supported by BP and Sullom Voe Terminals, Brudolff Hotels, Kettillonia, Hi-Arts, Salt Publishing, Scottish Book Trust and Live Literature Scotland, Smyril Line, Scottish Arts Council, Shetland Times Limited, The Lemon Tree, Shetland Museum and Archives, Shetland Forwirds, Shetland Islands Council and Shetland Islands Council Charitable Trust, Shetland Film Club, Atlantic Airways and John Leask and Son.

For more information contact Alex Cluness of Shetland Arts on 01595 694001.