The Author
T L Whalan is an author of outdoorsy young adult fiction with heart, humor, horses, and sometimes aliens. Her writing has placed in numerous short-story competitions and appeared in their resulting anthologies.
Her debut young adult apocalyptic survivalist series, Earthside, is scheduled for release in 2027. This six-part series follows a group of teenagers avoiding alien kidnapping in the Australian bush.
T L Whalan has been practicing writing for some time. She’s written about 20 unpublished novels. She’s written so much she even made a website about it.
Writing as Tegan Whalan, she released a family history project, The Wirrabara Whalans, in 2024. The non-fiction book spans four generations and 200 years, and was co-authored with Clynton Whalan and Leonie Whalan.
In 2021, T L Whalan had three of her short stories published: two in The Mirror as part of the 2021 Stringybark Short Story Competition, and one in Spicy Bites: Denim (under the pseudonym Tegan Lee). Her flash fiction story was shortlisted in the Australian Writers Centre February 2020 Furious Fiction competition.
T L Whalan also has almost as many dogs as opinions—enough to run a political and sometimes-angry blog, Some Thoughts About Dogs, since 2010.
The Person
During the day, Tegan is a social worker with families seeking to reunify with their children after child protection involvement. It’s much more fun than it sounds.
On weekends, Tegan commutes up to the mid-north where she works as a museum guide, talking about mining history. Tegan’s an Australian history geek, and she loves holding people hostage and imparting bullock cart knowledge.
In the past, she has maintained her chocolate habit by speaking publicly in schools, libraries, and other venues. Her favourite piece of feedback she ever received was when someone wrote that “The trainer tried to be funny”. It seems that attempts at humour manifest elsewhere in her life, too.
Tegan was born in Adelaide, South Australia, and then stayed there. She lives with her husband and 27 other pets on a dusty 7-acre paddock in the lower north. Tegan has never used her uterus and has no intentions to. She runs Leema Rescue, which rescues and rehomes dogs, puppies, and lambs. On a few occasions, she has accidentally taken in kittens and kids (the hooved kind).
Tegan’s also keen on reading (as all good and even mediocre writers must). She reads a lot of middle grade and young adult fiction in an attempt to distract herself from aging. Throughout her childhood, Tegan enjoyed many animal-related books. She has fond memories of reading the Animorphs series by K. A. Applegate, and the Redwall series by Brian Jacques.