Oscar Wilde is best known for his poetry, plays, including The Importance of Being Earnest, and the novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. Wilde also wrote a popular collection of stories for children called The Happy Prince and Other Tales. In the years since their publication, the stories in that collection–including The Selfish Giant–have been dramatised through radio, film, and dance worldwide.
Ritva Voutila was born in Nokia, Finland.
After finishing high school she studied art in Helsinki. In 1968 she moved to Australia, and then to Spain in 1971, where she continued perfecting her drawing and painting skills for the next ten years while working in fields as varied as garden design and computer programming and analysis. In 1981 she moved back to Australia, settling down in Sydney.
Her first children's book, 101 Excuses for Not Doing Homework by Carly Little (Scholastic), appeared in 1990. In 2015 The Stone Lion, illustrated by Ritva and written by Margaret Wild, won the Honour Book of the Year Award from The Children's Book Council of Australia (CBCA).
She lives in Ballarat, 100 km north-west of Melbourne, with her husband Richard.
