Cirrus@Austlit

Educated at St Peter's Collegiate Girls' School, Adelaide Teachers' College and Adelaide University, Elizabeth Hutchins holds a BA, DipEd and DipT. She was a secondary school teacher at Millicent, Unley and Alice Springs. In 1965 she married John Hutchins, a fellow high school teacher at Millicent, and they had three children. It was after the birth of their third child that she began to write.

Elizabeth has written picture books, younger and older children's novels, short stories for teenagers and adults, and stories used by Channel 10's "Mulligrubs" progamme. She runs Adelaide TAFE's Writing for Children course, for which she revised the textbook in 1996. She has edited several anthologies of writing resulting from workshops, including writing on environmental issues by children (Green Stew, 1991), writing by adults with severe physical disabilities (Words on Wings) and writing by Carers (Carers' Break).

In 1997 she received the inaugural Nutcote Fellowship. She is a foundation member and life member of the Kensington and Norwood Writers' Group, a member of the SA Museum's Waterhouse Club, the Writers' Centre, Ekidnas (children's bookwriters' club) and the Australian Society of Authors. Through her youngest child's hearing difficulties she has had a long-term involvement with the Cora Barclay Centre for children with hearing impairment, and has met a wide cross-section of children with hearing disabilities. She and her husband John have written a history of the Cora Barclay Centre (1995) and of the Pembroke School Hearing Unit (1996). Her background and interests are reflected in her writing, which features recognisable South Australian settings and concerns with issues such as disabilities, the environment and aboriginality. Until 1998 she was Executive Officer for the Australian Association for the Teaching of English. In 2004 she was appointed to the Committee of Management of the Australian Society of Authors.