Friday Barnes 13: In Plain Sight

R.A. Spratt was born in the UK and lived in Dursley, Gloucestershire - a town immortalised by Harry Potter’s deeply unpleasant relatives - until she was two years old. Then, like many ambitious English people cursed with regional accents so strong no other British person can take them seriously, her family moved to Australia. The tedium of growing up in the western suburbs of Sydney was fertiliser to the growth of R.A.’s imagination. The only thing for a kid to do was get on a bicycle and go to the library, so R.A. Spratt did just that. Once there, she read everything, devouring the books of Arthur Ransome, Enid Blyton, Roald Dahl, Robin Klein and Judy Blume, and audiotapes of Shakespeare productions and Sherlock Holmes dramatisations. And so, her young mind was formed, and set on the path of becoming the extraordinary author she is today.

Now based in Bowral NSW, she’s the bestselling writer of dozens of absurd and witty books including Friday Barnes, The Adventures of Nanny Piggins, The Peski Kids and the Shockingly and Astonishingly Good Stories collections. Her podcast, Bedtime Stories with R.A. Spratt, has had over 4 million downloads and connects R.A. with story-lovers across the globe.