This doctor moonlights as a children's author in her spare time

Posted: Tuesday Apr 11, 2023

Libby Whittaker lives and works in Dunedin where she is a doctor. Her debut junior fiction novel Sunny Turner and the Deadly Bite was a finalist in the 2015 Wishing Shelf Book Awards and her latest work, Eye Spyclops, (illustrated by Lily Uivel, published by Little Love, RRP $20) a children’s picture book, is out Thursday 13 April.

You're a doctor, and a writer. How do you combine the two?

I would say I was a writer first and a doctor second, and I’m very lucky to be able to do both. Writing has taken a back seat at times during busier seasons, and after I published my first novel, Sunny Turner and the Deadly Bite, as a teenager it took me seven years to publish anything else!

Medicine certainly provides a lot of material to write about. When I published Sunny Turner, I was a second year medical student, and there are a few scenes where Sunny and her friends learn about magical diseases and dragon anatomy which reflect that.

Some of my poems also draw from medical experiences. Writing poetry is one way to reflect on and process difficult things that happen at work. At other times, it’s a nice distraction to write about things completely unrelated to medicine.

You've also published a junior fiction novel, and a poetry collection. Do you have a particular audience you like writing for?

So far I seem to be making a habit of genre-hopping, but my favourite audience to write for is children! I think back to the books that made me fall in love with stories and storytelling as a child, and the dream would be to help create that experience for the next generation of readers.

Eye Spyclops has been my favourite writerly journey to date, in large part because of the amazing job artist Lily Uivel did in bringing Alfred and his world to life! Creating a children’s picture book is a lot of fun and I can’t wait for the next one.

Tell us how you write.

I’m definitely a night owl and typically work best from 10pm onwards! I drink too much coffee, procrastinate quite a bit, and occasionally finish a story or two. My ideas come from a variety of places: work, thoughts while walking home or in the middle of the night, half-remembered dreams, and (many) folders of stories and ideas from when I was younger.

I’ve always enjoyed writing about fantastical things, and Alfred wandered into my head as a cyclops with myopia without too much ado. Half asleep, I mumbled to my partner to message me ‘Cyclops needs glasses’ so that I would remember the idea the next day; and thankfully, he did!

I have a screenshot of that text from July 2021 and now here we are. It’s a dream come true and I can’t wait for my nephews and nieces and other young readers to meet Alfred on the page soon.

Original Article HERE