AustLit

An English and Cross-curriculum Literacy Co-ordinator at an Adelaide High School, Mike Dumbleton has also worked as a Literacy Curriculum Officer for the South Australian Education Department. In this role he devised and wrote a student/teacher web site called 'Online Literacy' which provides literacy support for students in the middle years of schooling.

Mike began devising educational texts for teachers in 1988 shortly before he started writing picture books. He attributes his interest in writing in part to his grandfather, a local village poet in Oxfordshire, England, who regularly recited his poems to the family (with or without requests). Mike was awarded a Literature Grant by the South Australian Department for the Arts and Cultural heritage in 1993, and in 1994 was selected for a Writers' Performance and Presentation Course in Sydney, funded by the Literature Board of the Australia Council and organised by the National Book Council. He was also awarded an Arts SA Literature Grant in 2001 to support the completion of his first teenage novel, Watch Out For Jamie Joel.

Dumbleton has also written educational textbooks