SSTUWA - State School Teachers' Union of Western Australia

Amanda Betts: Shutter Speed

Teacher Amanda Betts is also an author with Fremantle Press.

With her second novel just gone to print (Wave Length) we are looking for someone to review her first novel, Shutter Speed.

Amanda will also be appearing in July’s Fremantle Poetry Month. Look out for more information on this ( which is full of free events for students, and a special Master teaching Class for Poetry, for teachers) on this site and in June’s Western teacher.

Notes from Amanda: Shutter Speed was written in response to a futile struggle (during a stint as a relief-teacher) to engage Year 11s and 12s with literature. Nothing seemed to grab them. What they were after, they told me, was something interesting, local, gritty and realistic. Something now! I knew then that an idea which had been knocking about in my mind had an audience and a purpose.

Category: Young Adult
Publication Year: 2008
Publisher: Fremantle Press
Synopsis: Living alone with his silent father and the shadow cast by his long-dead mother, Dustin waits. All he wants is to slip under the radar and survive what’s left of high school; get through his work at the photo lab, get by. Beyond that lies real life. Then one Sunday, a single photo gets stuck in the processor and it changes everything. The bike in the picture is decent, for once, a Ducati Monster 620, cherry red. The woman beside it is striking too. What begins then as an innocent curiosity in Terri Pavish, her photography, her freedom, her speed, becomes something else, and the past swings full-circle to haunt him.

Please contact Deb Olds on 9210 6051 if you are interested in this book.

Amanda Betts' Website : Click Here

Youtube Promotional Video : ">Click Here