Hello, my name is Joseph Coelho. I'm a writer, so I write books for young people like you guys, and I write all sorts of books. I write picture books, middle grade books for slightly older readers and YA books that are for really big readers. And it all started, I think, when I was a kid, because when I was a kid, I would observe the world around me. And back then I was getting ideas that have quite literally become stories and poems and books. Growing up in a tower block has deeply inspired my poetry. When I was growing up, I would get often get frustrated that I would never see homes like mine represented in books or in film or TV. And so now that I'm a writer, it means that I can write about the places I grew up in. So I can write about council estates and blocks of flats, but I can also start to bring in the magic that I so enjoyed reading about when I was a kid. I used to love reading things like "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" or "Five Children and It" where you've got groups of children discovering magical welds or indeed magical creatures. So in my writing, I try and do that, bring the magic, but onto the estate into a slightly more urban environment because I think it's important that we all realise that we all have access to magic. Writing a poem can take anywhere from half an hour to several months to several years, but no matter how long it takes you to write that first draught of your poem, you then have to edit and redraft your work. That's something I always do, and I will often edit and redraft a poem 10, 15, 20 times before I publish it. So that's always part of the process, no matter how long it took for that first draught to come out. And sometimes a first draught of a poem does come very quickly. Sometimes it does come out in half an hour. You've got that first draught and think, yes, this is a poem. Sometimes it does take longer. Sometimes I have to keep coming back to that first draught over days, weeks, or months before I feel like I've got something that, yes, there is a strong poem here, and then the editing and redrafting process begins. So I was lucky enough to become the Waterstones Children's Laureate between 2022 and 2024, and my role as children's laureate was to represent children's literature and to encourage young people like yourselves to read. I also got a silver medal, which I got to wear lots, which was lots of fun.