Elizabeth Vercoe

In her past lives Elizabeth has worked as a secondary school teacher, theatre-in-education performer, musician, bartender, firewood stacker, broccoli picker, tractor driver, sandwich maker and coffee frother.

Other interesting tidbits are five years hard labour as a volunteer with Canteen Victoria (with Kerry Abramowski, co author of The Grief Book at the helm), during which time she wrote several short plays to initiate discussion among young people with cancer and their siblings.

Last century (!) Elizabeth was delighted to receive the Queen's Trust Award (involving little white bread sandwiches) to run painting workshops for teenagers with cancer. At once profound, liberating and humbling, this experience was something she looks back on with great warmth. Three of the participants have since passed away but their artwork lives on.

Elizabeth is happy to speak openly, honestly and with a sense of hope about her own life journey. This includes cancer diagnosis, incomplete quadriplegia (not good when trying to play a piano concerto or do cartwheels on the beach), a surgically enhanced body (function not form), learning to walk again, learning to talk again, discovering that she could paint (and that people will buy her work), living with physical pain and the advantages and disadvantages of that little blue disabled windscreen sticker.

As a visitor to your school or library, Elizabeth offers the following themes, with variations:

• An author / illustrator talk
• An author / illustrator workshop
• Character visit from Jess in Keep Your Hair On which includes writing and / or discussion
• Practical workshop using The Grief Book which includes writing and / or discussion
• An artist / illustrator workshop
• A journal making workshop

In short, Elizabeth is more than happy to work with the specific needs of a group and address them in her presentation.