Jann Weeratunga

"I am not the same, having seen the moonshine on the other side of the world."— Mary-Anne Radmacher.

"This is me!" Weeratunga declares, I adored 'Winnie the Pooh' and 'Lord of the Rings' as a child, escaping into those imaginary worlds gave me the desire to travel as an adult."

An Award-Winning Best Seller in South Africa with her Polly's Piralympics series, she is a prolific writer. Seen mainly as a children's author, she has also delved into adult works — Ethereal (nominated for Best Anthology in Africa 2018 under her pen name JE Gallery), Lockdown Behind the Mask and Angry Tears.

However, it is for her Children's books that she is best known. Author of the Polly's Piralympics Series, the Toucane Series, the Yogaminis Series, the Sporting Dreams Series and the Farouk the Falcon Series, as well as several stand-alones including Richard the Rhino's Adventures in Africa endorsed by Francoise Mamby Anthony (Thula Thula Wildlife Game Reserve and author of 'An Elephant in My Kitchen.')

"Covid 19, in 2020 trapped many children in their homes, so I decided to create more worlds for them to escape into and wrote furiously."

Weeratunga is probably best known though, for her Polly's Piralympics books, which all started when she was inspired by the closing ceremony of the 2012 London Paralympic Games. In his closing speech, Sir Phillip Craven told of how a young boy was reading with his mother. In the book, he saw a man with an eye patch, a hook for a hand, a parrot on his shoulder and a wooden leg. When asked who it was, he said,

“Well, he has only one leg, so he must be an Olympian.”

Such was the strength of the London 2012 Paralympics that it changed peoples’ perceptions of disability forever. The speech made Weeratunga both laugh and cry and began her journey with Polly the Parrot and her Paralympian Pirates and their many adventures and Paralympics games.

Now she lives with her dogs in South Africa, overlooking the hills where her imagination runs free...

"Travelling - it leaves you speechless and turns you into a story-teller." — Ibn Battuta