Anna Solding is the founder and director of independent publishing company MidnightSun Publishing. Anna is also the co-founder and director of the Australian Short Story Festival. She has travelled the world as a publisher, partaking in delegations to China, Korea and India, and she has published many books that have been shortlisted for or won awards, both in Australia and internationally. Anna has attended the Bologna Children’s Book Fair and the London Book Fair. A writer and editor, Anna has a Masters and a PhD in Creative Writing from The University of Adelaide and is the co-founder of two literary magazines and the current president of the Small Press Network. She loves stories that have language that sings and characters that sweep you away. Literary fiction with a twist and hybrid stories that veer towards crime, speculative fiction or thrillers excite her. In picture books, she loves unexpected and untold stories from history and books that take children’s experiences seriously. In all of her list she includes books with diverse characters, books including fierce emotions and desires, books about our changing world and books that will stay with you long after you have finished reading.
 
Anna is always looking for literary stories that surprise and delight. Whether they are novels for adults about female desire or middle-grade books about pirate ghosts or picture books about brave and adventurous kids doing things she has never encountered before, Anna finds and publishes stories that are unusual and textured. She is specifically on the look out for manuscripts for adults about passion and revulsion. For young adults she would like contemporary stories about friendships and hardship. Middle- grade books could be either contemporary or fantastical and picture books need to show her something new.
 
Anna is not looking for commercial or genre stories. She is not interested in non-fiction, romance, horror or fantasy. She is not publishing poetry or plays. And she is definitely not looking for stories about bears or unicorns. There are plenty of those around already. She is also not particularly interested in picture books with an obvious message.