About the Author
Sketa (a.k.a Selina Kucks) was born in the autumn of 1964 at Mater Misericordia Mother’s Hospital in South Brisbane, Australia and grew up on the Darling Downs in South-East Queensland, where she attended Toowoomba State High. Selina went to the University of Southern Queensland (then, Darling Downs Institute of Advanced Education), where she earned her first Diploma of Creative Arts – Painting and Music major. This complemented her abilities in dance and song. Shortly after, Selina accepted a contract to perform at the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games, Para-Olympics and the World Tour & Trade Festival in Korea. Having the bug for travel, Selina then moved to the United Kingdom where she worked at the Australian Embassy – QLD House while taking dance classes at London Royal Ballet, in convent garden.
Having a natural talent for linguistics, Selina took up studies at Griffith University, Australia, where she completed a BA in Modern Asian Studies majoring in Korean and Political Science. In 1993, she accepted a scholarship to Yonsei University, Seoul where she extended her Korean language. Shortly after her arrival, Selina won First Prize for Traditional Music at the Daejon World Expo, which led to a cultural reporting position at MBC and a ‘Pansori’ research position at The Corporation Korea Traditional Art Institute under the guiding hands of Song Chang Soon – Human Cultural Asset No 5. In turn, she accepted an offer to work with the Korean Commission for UNESCO as Chief Editor.
Over the next few years, Selina fine-tuned her capabilities as a freelance reporter, becoming a house-hold name. In 1997, she was honoured by the Korean National Ministry of Culture for her service to Korea and the Arts. In September 1995, she married and gave birth to her son Ethan-Luke Cho in 1998. Selina took up the arduous task of home-schooling, while teaching English to underprivileged Korean children on the border of North and South Korea. Here, curriculum formulation led to writing children’s stories for her students, which in turn gave birth to ‘The Parchment Series’.
A rocky marriage saw her returning to Australia with her son, in 2000. Selina sought solace in her books, MA studies in Diplomacy and teaching at the University of Southern QLD. After years of struggle, the first book in ‘The Parchment’ series was finally published in 2009 by ELK Publishing, Korea. With the help of a good friend, she translated the book in 2010 for the Korean market. That same year, ‘The Parchment’ was entered for both the Aurealis Awards and QLD Premier Literary Awards. On the 18th of August, 2011, ‘The Parchment’ hit #6 in fantasy and #7 in children’s literature on Amazon. In 2012, part 2 of the series – ‘The Parchment Tale Unfolds’ was published.
In 2013, Selina extended her teaching degree; established ELK Publishing in Australia under the Sketa Oz brand in 2014 and published her next children’s book – ‘Possum Tales...in the Lettuce Patch’ – which is the first of five illustrated, children’s books.
Both ‘The Parchment’ series and ‘Possum Tales’ mark major milestones for this Australian author and independent publisher of children’s books, which sell and distribute on a global scale to physical and online bookstores in the UK, USA, Canada and Austral-Asia.
