British/Australian, Martin Ed Chatterton has been working as a creative with extensive cross-media background and experience at the highest level in the UK, US and Australia for over 30 years, primarily for mainstream producers and publishers including Penguin Random House, Scholastic, Walker Books, Oxford University Press, Hachette, Simon & Schuster, Macmillan, Harper Collins, Transworld, Egmont Books and the BBC. He has written 40 books across a wide range of ages and genres and has illustrated well over a hundred, including books with Michael Rosen, Julia Donaldson, Antony Horowitz, Roger McGough and Alexander McCall Smith. His work has been translated into fifteen languages.
In addition to designing, performing and producing, Martin writes and illustrates across a wide range of ages, producing picture books, early readers, reading scheme component books, early primary fiction, primary chapter books, and teen/YA fiction. He also writes adult crime fiction, screenplays and produces animated children’s content as a partner in UK-based media/IP company, Hungry Head Productions.
Recent creative work has included co-writing (and illustrating) many titles in the globally successful Middle School series with James Patterson for Penguin Random House as well a crime novel with the same writer; writing and illustrating Winter of the White Bear, an anti- slavery picture book (derived from his PhD on the subject) – shortlisted for the 2020 Prime Minister's Literary Awards and the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards 2021 – and which is currently in production as an animated feature film with BAFTA -winning Blue Zoo Animation (UK) following funding from the British Film Institute and for which Martin has written the screenplay; the ARIA-nominated Alexander the Elephant (with Pat Davern) for ABC Publishing; four books in the Lollies-nominated Thimble Monkey series by Jon Blake (Firefly UK); The Tell, a YA thriller for Penguin Random House, and writing and illustrating Dragonville, a four book graphic novel series for Hodder UK’s Rising Stars scheme published in 2021. He is currently writing and illustrating two more titles for Hachette’s Reading Planet program scheduled to publish mid-2022.
Hungry Head’s latest multimedia venture is Bluenoses; an animated primary age series Martin devised and directed, featuring the work of UK poet, Paul Cookson. In the past year Martin has also been working alongside Paul with English Premier league club, Everton FC, on various short films (as director). 2021 saw four books published involving Paul and Martin including Football 4 Every 1 (for Macmillan), and Nail On The Head, the final book in the Covid Diaries (illustrated with Korky Paul and Chris Riddell).
Martin has previously worked as a ‘script doctor’ for See Pictures on projects by Christian Debney and Peter Cornwell. Dotty, a six-part TV drama series co-written by Martin with Brian Viner was picked up for development by Bill Kenwright Fim UK in 2020. Martin is the sole screenwriter for Hope, a full-length independent Canadian feature film scheduled to start shooting in 2022 with Sarah Moffat directing (produced by Black Box Global). Martin’s crime novel, A Dark Place To Die, is in development with Escapade Media/Mam Tor as a UK/Australian 6 x 1 hour drama (as The Art of Killing).
Recently Martin has been redesigning, introducing, (and, in some cases) illustrating the ‘Readable Classics’ series available on Amazon. The first five titles are: Frankenstein, Dracula, The Hound of the Baskervilles, Pride & Prejudice and The Great Gatsby.
Martin is represented by Curtis Brown Literary Agency in London and Sydney, and by Nexus Arts Performance Agency for Australia/New Zealand and by Authors Abroad outside Aus/NZ.
