Natascha Biebow
Alison Branagan
Tim Bowler
Barry Cunningham
Lindsey Gardiner
Candy Gourlay
Miriam Halahmy
Layn Marlow
Geraldine McCaughrean
Sarah McIntyre
Anne Marie Perks
Lee Weatherly
Chris Wormell
Editors Panel
Jonathan Lambert/Templar
Lizzie Spratt/Walker Books
Annie Eaton/Random House
Art Directors/Editors Panel
Jo Spooner/Macmillan
Val Braithwaite/Bloomsbury
Ben Sharpe/DFC Comics
November 22 to 23, 2008
West Downs Campus
University of Winchester SO22 4NR
Lizzie Spratt is commissioning editor at Walker Books.
She started out in publishing as an editorial assistant about 7 years ago at Bloomsbury Children's Books. During her time at Bloomsbury she worked on lots of different sorts of projects from novelty baby books, picture books and young illustrated series to older historical fiction and YA novels.
It was around the same time she picked up and read her first graphic novel - Jimmy Corrigan by Chris Ware. From that moment on she felt there was a real hole to be filled in children's books - why weren't there more good books in comic strip form available for kids?
At Bloomsbury Lizzie was lucky enough to work on books by Neil Gaiman and Dave Mckean - storytelling which stretched the boundary between comics and picture books. She commissioned Gary Northfield's Derek the Sheep - a collection of stories from the belligerent Beano character. And Ewa (the autobiography of a Muslim girl) by Asia Alfasi, a true rising manga star.
It has been a life long passion of Lizzie's while working in publishing to promote graphic novels for children, and now she is delighted to be making it happen in her (fairly) new role as a commissioning editor at Walker Books with a special focus on developing graphic novels for children across all the age ranges.