Ian Hayward Robinson is a former head of Professional Writing and Editing at Chisholm Institute where he taught for 14 years. He has run courses on Story Structure and conducted workshops at many writing conferences across Australia, including for the Storytellers Guild, the Romance Writers of Australia and Writers Victoria.

He is a trained primary school teacher who worked for many years in curriculum development and teacher development for the Victorian Department of Education, and has written over two dozen mathematics textbooks for primary schools. He has had two full-length plays performed at La Mama in Melbourne and won several one-act-play awards.

The Most Amazing Thing, illustrated by Matt Shanks, is his first picture book. Ian was a tutor in Philosophy at the University of Melbourne and taught Philosophy of Education at Coburg Teachers College. He is President Emeritus of the Rationalist Society of Australia. Ian lives on Phillip Island in south-east Victoria within walking distance of the sea.

Matt was born in Sydney, Australia and now resides in Melbourne. Sandwiched between the bush and beach, the inspiration for his short stories comes from a love of his unique country. His early fascination for the combination of words and pictures saw him complete a Bachelor of Design at the University of Sydney in 2003.

It took him 10 years while working as a Creative Director at some of Melbourne’s best design agencies to realise that this ‘watercolour hobby’ of his needed to be shared with more than just his wife and cat.

Simplicity, humour and the art of the unseen are strong themes in Matt’s illustration work. With his strong understanding of the commercial aspects of the business from a career in design, he is a uniquely creative and pragmatic artist. He loves to work collaboratively and iteratively to achieve the best result for the audience.  

Matt has previously illustrated for Papyrus greeting cards. He’s currently working on books for children with the wonderful people at Scholastic Australia and HarperCollins Australia.

Matt is a member of The Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators and The Australian Society of Authors. For books, he is represented by the lovely Margaret Connolly.