Mike Lucas

www.mikelucas.com.au

Mike was born in Plymouth, England, and moved to Adelaide, Australia, in 2010.

His first picture book, Olivia’s Voice, was a CBCA Notable in 2018. Later that year, Vanishing, a book that discusses animal extinction, was published. Bad Herbert arrived in 2020. Let's Build a House, the first book in the Let’s Build series was published by Hachette Australia in April 2021. Let’s Build a Backyard followed in 2022. His first YA novel, What We All Saw, was published in May 2022 by Penguin Australia and was shortlisted for several awards. The Christmas Train was published by Little Hare in October 2023 and Where is Cheeky Monster? in 2024.

Mike has written and published several books of nonsense poetry, has had some work highly commended in magazines and contributed to Tadpoles in the Torrens, dedicated to Max Fatchen. He also had a poem selected by US Poet Laureate, Kenn Nesbitt, which appeared in One Minute Till Bedtime, published by Little Brown in the US and Australia in 2016, and another by Brian Moses in a 2021 Anthology with MacMillan UK.  

In 2023 he was awarded Honorary Membership of The Children's Book Council of Australia (South Australia). He is also an Ambassador for The Premier's Reading Challenge in South Australia,

Mike owns and helps to run a bookshop, Shakespeare's, in Blackwood, South Australia. Each year he writes a poem with the CBCA Book Week theme as a title. In 2017 and 2022 he was one of the main organisers of the Adelaide Festival of Children's Books.

He also works full time as an engineer and is a black belt in Tae Kwon Do. He is married with two grown up children, three cats and Holly the Bookshop Dog.

Mike has very little time to sleep, but often thinks up a poem or two while he does.