Geoffrey McSkimming (born 1 January 1962) is a children's novelist and poet. He is the author of the 19 volume Cairo Jim chronicles and Jocelyn Osgood jaunts and the new Phyllis Wong series of mystery novels.
McSkimming was born in Sydney, Australia. To write his Cairo Jim stories, he travelled to Egypt, Peru, Tanzania (including Zanzibar), Greece, Mexico, Turkey, Italy and Singapore and other locations. He is much in demand for author talks, and appears with his wife, the magician Sue-Anne Webster, to promote the Phyllis Wong mysteries series.
Geoffrey McSkimming has contributed to magazines and poetry anthologies and he has also narrated the Cairo Jim chronicles as audio books for Bolinda Publishing. He wrote five character tours which were performed in the galleries at the Art Gallery of NSW in Sydney, Australia, from 2000 through 2013. In June 2006 Geoffrey McSkimming undertook an author tour of the UK for Walker Books, who released ten titles in the Cairo Jim series in the UK. In 2007, Scholastic published Geoffrey McSkimming's book of verse, Ogre in a Toga and Other Perverse Verses. The audio version of this title, narrated by McSkimming, was shortlisted in the Audie Awards (US) in 2008.
Geoffrey McSkimming's 26th book, Phyllis Wong and the Girl who Danced with Lightning, was published in 2017 by 9 Diamonds Press. He is currently writing the sixth story in the Phyllis Wong Time Detective mysteries series, which will be published in 2018. The Phyllis Wong Time Detective stories will be appearing regularly into the future, in whatever ways that may be defined.
All titles in the Cairo Jim chronicles are being e-published by 9 Diamonds Press. A completely new Cairo Jim novel will appear in 2018.
Geoffrey McSkimming is represented by Curtis Brown Literary Agency, London and Sydney.
His Cairo Jim and Jocelyn Osgood books are published in many different languages in Australia, United Kingdom, Japan, Korea, Portugal, Germany, Italy, Poland, Russia, Hungary, and New Zealand.