Dr. Ross Watkins is an acclaimed novelist and children’s picture book author/illustrator. Ross made his publishing debut as the illustrator of The Boy Who Grew into a Tree (Penguin, 2012), which was shortlisted for the 2013 Aurealis Award for Speculative Fiction. His best-selling picture book One Photo (Penguin Random House, 2016) was shortlisted for the 2017 CBCA Picture Book of the Year, with 20,000 copies published in China (TB Publishing, 2018) and 10,000 copies in North America (Dad’s Camera, Candlewick, 2018). His novel The Apology (UQP, 2018) was optioned for television by Fremantle Media.
Ross’ research explores narrative meaning-making as central to verbal, visual, social, cognitive, and emotional literacies. As a published author and illustrator, his traditional and non-traditional research outputs centre on narrative practice in relation to two key considerations: the representation of grief, and the role picture books and illustrated novels play in understanding complex cultural phenomena.
Ross’ engagement activities primarily focus on: 1. community and industry workshops that promote the application of multimodal storytelling to specific personal and interpersonal issues; 2. as the Managing Editor of TEXT: Journal of Writing and Writing Courses – Australia’s leading academic journal in the field (Q1 ranking) – he is a national contributor to sector engagement activities that promote and sustain the practice and scholarship of Creative Writing as a means to express, examine and challenge the status quo of personal, social, cultural, political and environmental values, norms and praxes.
Service Roles
- TEXT: Journal of Writing and Writing Courses, Managing Editor
- Australasian Association of Writing Programs (AAWP), Publications Sub-Committee Liaison Officer
Awards/Fellowships
- Children's Book Council of Australia Picture Book of the Year 2017 Shortlist: One Photo
- Office of Learning and Teaching Citation for Outstanding Contribution to Student Learning, 2013
- Vice Chancellor’s and President’s Commendation for Excellence in Learning and Teaching, 2013
- Aurealis Award for Speculative Fiction 2013 (Category: Children’s book predominantly told with pictures) Shortlist: The Boy Who Grew into a Tree
- Queensland Premier’s Literary Award for Emerging Author (Manuscript) 2011 Shortlist: ‘The Arc’
Professional Social Media
Ross is currently involved in collaborative research which utilises narrative to navigate chronic pain, particularly paediatric pain. This research is being conducted with Queensland Children’s Hospital staff across multiple projects. These projects include: investigating and examining the representation of pain in children’s picture books to understand how children receive pain education in commercial picture book narratives; utilising zine-making as a therapeutic method to express chronic pain and its impact on the biopsychosocial lives of patients, particularly children. He believes storytelling can be a powerful tool for health education, encouraging positive behaviours and mental health awareness in an engaging and accessible way. By integrating storytelling into educational and therapeutic settings, creative writing can contribute to lifelong well-being and healthier communities.
ORCID ID
Research areas
- Multimodal narratives (especially picture books, illustrated novels and comics)
- Narrative representations of grief (loss and melancholy)
- Textual materiality (the book as object)
- Cultures of collecting (cultural significance of objects and their narrative value)
- Radical scholarship (blended forms of academic and creative expression)
Ross teaches into the ‘Creative Writing and Publishing’ suite of courses in the School of Business and Creative Industries, specialising in novel writing, illustrated books and editing.
Ross is a highly experienced Higher Degree by Research supervisor with over twenty PhD projects supervised on a broad range of genres/forms, including: picture books, children’s and young adult fiction, fairy tale, composite novel, memoir, historical fiction, literary fiction, horror fiction, video games and transmedia. Subject/theoretical areas supervised include: grief, trauma, memory, diverse sexualities, sexual abuse, chronic pain, depression, ecofeminism, ecocriticism, and narratology.
Ross is particularly interested in receiving PhD proposals on illustrated books (picture books, illustrated novels and comics) and general children’s fiction.
Teaching areas
- Creative Writing
Dr Ross Watkins' specialist areas of knowledge include: creative writing , contemporary realism, visual narrative, fictocriticism, melancholy, loss, mourning and poetic elegy devices in prose, cultural significance of objects and is available for media commentary on topics related to children’s publishing.