Max Hatzoglou
Inspiring young author and Southern Cross Grammar student Mia Gjoni will release her second book, Our Trip to Alien Kingdom, at this year’s Brimbank Writers and Readers Festival beginning on March 17.
The 14-year-old’s second book will be a continuation from her first book, Our Trip to Gravity Planet, which is a series all about Mia and her family traveling through space, and this time they meet a new species … aliens!
Interestingly, the story idea came from a writing assignment set by her tutor in grade four that had to be based on a floating house.
“My tutor gave me this picture of a floating house and said ‘base a story around this’,” Mia said.
Mia’s mother Belinda was amazed by the story and said it needed to be shared around.
“Me and her tutor, once we read this piece of writing that she did, we were just like ‘this is amazing, we need to do something with this”,” Belinda said.
“And then Mia started showing her family and friends as well and they were like ‘this is awesome’ so that’s what then gave us the push to actually go ahead and do something with it, it wasn’t just an ordinary story that she had to write for school.”
After finding an editor, illustrator and designer, Mia self-published the first book and released it last year.
Mia wants to inspire future authors similar to how she was inspired by British authors.
“Roald Dahl and David Walliams are some of my favourite authors ever so they really inspired me because their stories are very unique and interesting,” she said.
