Participating Writers
Michael Mohammed Ahmad
Michael Mohammed Ahmad was Chief Editor of Westside Publications from 2005 – 2012. His short stories and novellas have appeared in HEAT Literary Journal, The Lifted Brow and Seizure. His latest personal essay, ‘On Being Michael and Mohammed’ will appear in the Allen & Unwin anthology, Coming of Age. Mohammed’s first short novel, Be Here When I’m Back, is forthcoming in 2013 (Giramondo). Mohammed is currently a doctoral candidate with the University of Western Sydney Writing & Society Research Centre.
Jessica Alice
Jessica Alice edits poetry for Voiceworks magazine, produces Spoken Word and Women on the Line for 3CR 855AM, and co-presents the feminist podcast Wham Bam Thank You Ma’am. Her writing can be found in Cordite, Voiceworks, The Victorian Writer, Spook Magazine and more. Tweets @jessica_alice_
Ali Alizadeh
Ali Alizadeh is a Melbourne-based writer and his forthcoming book is the work of fiction Transactions (UQP). His previous books have been shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s Literary Award and the NSW Premier’s Literary Award. He is a lecturer in Creative Writing at Monash University.
Magazine Ampersand
Ampersand Magazine is a curiosity journal based in Melbourne, Australia.
Karen Andrews
Karen Andrews is an award-winning writer, author, blogger, editor and publisher. Her work has been featured in Island, Verandah, page seventeen, dotdotdash and The Emerging Writer. Her latest book is Crying in the Car: Reflections on Life and Motherhood (Miscpress). She is also Program Manager at the Emerging Writers’ Festival. Her blog is www.miscmum.com and is on Twitter as @miscmum.
Adolfo Aranjuez
Adolfo Aranjuez is the in-house editor at independent publisher Melbourne Books, whose anthology Award Winning Australian Writing is released annually. He is also the deputy editor of the literary magazine Voiceworks. More information about Adolfo and his work can be found on his website, www.adolfoaranjuez.com. He tweets @adolfo_ae.
Romy Ash
When I’m not writing fiction (my novel Floundering was long listed for the Miles Franklin and the Stella Prize), I write about food here: http://www.trotski-ash.com. You might find some of my other writing in The Griffith Review, or The Big Issue, or Kinfolk magazine, amongst others.
Tahlia Azaria
Tahlia Azaria is the General Manager of SYN Media, a not-for-profit media organisation run by a community of young people. SYN provides training and broadcast opportunities for people aged 12-26 across multiple platforms including its 24/7 radio broadcast on 90.7FM (Melbourne-wide), Digital Radio, syn.org.au and through community television station Channel 31. Tahlia is also currently the Youth Representative on the Community Broadcasting Association of Australia Board of Directors.
Van Badham
Van Badham is the award-winning writer of more than thirty internationally produced plays for stage, music theatre and radio.
Khairani ‘Okka’ Barokka
Khairani Barokka is an Indonesian writer, performer, artist, and advocate/researcher, raised in Jakarta, the US, and Melbourne, with a masters from ITP at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. She writes fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, teach, perform spoken word and performance art, promote arts, tech, and disability activism – and EAT – and internationally.
Arda Barut
Arda Barut is a Western Sydney-based Turkish and English poet. In 2008 Arda performed a live reading of his poems ‘Bucket’ and ‘The Sand Man’ at the Sydney Writers’ Festival event, Westside @ the Wharf. Arda’s poetry has appeared in Westside: Fill Your Bucket and Westside: On Western Sydney. In 2012 Arda was involved in the ATYP National Studio. His monologue, ‘The Market Brolosopher’ was selected and produced for the 2013 ATYP Voices Project.
Luke Beesley
Luke Beesley is a Melbourne-based poet, and a singer-songwriter and artist. His third poetry collection, New Works on Paper (Giramondo), is forthcoming, as is his debut EP, under the name New Archer. A collaborative exhibition with artist, Kate Hill, opens at Mr Kitly gallery on May 17 (till June 2).
Angela Bennetts
Angela Bennetts is co-director of the National Young Writers’ Festival; co-editor of immersive iPad journal Cuttings; and co-founder of event collective Even Books (nominated for a SMAC award in 2009 for Best Collective; winner of the Firstdraft Emerging Curator program 2010 and a City of Sydney Cultural Grant for 2013). Previously she has acted as Arts & Entertainment Editor of City Hub, City News, Bondi View and Inner West Independent and Fashion Editor at TwoThousand. She has completed a BA Communications (Writing & Contemporary Cultures)/International Studies (Japanese) and was awarded a First Class Honours in Communications, both from the University of Technology, Sydney.
Andrew Bifield
Andrew Bifield is an expatriate Western Australian poet, blogger, writer and winner of the 2012 QANTAS Spirit of Youth Awards written word category. He currently lives in Melbourne, his work most recently appearing in artsHub, Regime Magazine and on the Emerging Writers’ Festival blog.
Tony Birch
Tony Birch’s books include Shadowboxing (2006), Father’s Day (2009), and Blood (2011), shortlisted for the Miles Franklin award (2012). His new collection of stories, The Promise, will be released in 2014 (UQP). Tony teaches at the University of Melbourne.
Matt Blackwood
I’m often confused for an award winning writer who’s passionate about Locative Literature, short stories and novels. Other times I’m just confused.
Bethanie Blanchard
Bethanie Blanchard is a freelance writer, editor and critic. She is the literary critic for crikey.com.au with Liticism. Her writing centres on literature, arts and culture, and has appeared in The Monthly, The Australian, The Drum, The Big Issue, Kill Your Darlings, The Lifted Brow, Crikey, Limelight and Women’s Agenda among others.
Ginger Briggs
Ginger Briggs is a Melbourne writer. Her work has been published in various newspapers and magazines, and she gives writing workshops to judicial officers, lawyers and other professionals. Her first book, Staunch, is published by Affirm Press.
Amanda Brotchie
I’m a writer and director in theatre, film and television, and co-creator of the ABC comedy Lowdown. In 2009 I co-founded High Wire Films, whose other productions include ABC1’s The Agony of Life. I’ve also been a musician and actor, and hold a PhD in Linguistics, specializing in narrative analysis.
Stephanie Brotchie
Stephanie Brotchie the co-founder of Slow Clap, an award-winning comedic collaboration with Vachel Sirason. Stephanie is a multi-award winning artist whose work spans comedy, theatre, literature, live art, creative production and visual art.
Mel Campbell
Mel Campbell is a freelance journalist and cultural critic. She is the national film editor of the Thousands city guides and co-founder and editor of pop-culture website The Enthusiast. Her debut book, Out of Shape: Debunking Myths about Fashion and Fit, is published in June 2013 by Affirm Press.
Luke Carman
Luke Carman self-identifies as an anti-folk monologist with epigrammatical tendencies. His work has haunted the journals HEAT, Westside and Cultural Studies Review. Luke is currently a doctoral candidate with the University of Western Sydney Writing & Society Research Centre.
Lachlann Carter
Lachlann Carter is co-founder and Program Director of 100 Story Building, a social enterprise and centre for young writers in Footscray. He is a former teacher, and has been called everything from ‘Mr Lachlann’ to ‘Mr Farter’ (and some other, less printable names too).
Jo Case
Jo Case’s first book, Boomer and Me: A memoir of motherhood, and Asperger’s is published by Hardie Grant. She is senior writer/editor at the Wheeler Centre and has been books editor of The Big Issue, deputy editor of Australian Book Review and associate editor of Kill Your Darlings.
Felicity Castagna
Felicity Castagna is the author of Small Indiscretions: Stories of Travel in Asia (Transit Lounge, 2011) and the ebook, So You Want to be a Writer? Her next book, The Incredible Here and Now (Giramondo, forthcoming) is a young adults’ novel about Western Sydney told in vignettes. Felicity is currently a doctoral candidate with the University of Western Sydney Writing & Society Research Centre.
Tamar Chnorhokian
Tamar Chnorhokian has completed a Communications degree in Writing and Publishing at the University of Western Sydney and has worked as a columnist, journalist and a freelance writer. She has written a YA novel titled The Diet Starts on Monday which she hopes to publish in the near future.
Sam Cooney
Sam Cooney has had writing published in Australia and overseas, including in Meanjin, Island, Seizure, The Rumpus and a Sleepers Almanac. He has commissioned and edited writing for a few Australian journals and magazines, and is the editor and publisher of The Lifted Brow, a bimonthly magazine that you need to read. He writes a column about Twitter for Junkee.com
Alison Croggon
Alison Croggon is a Melbourne writer whose work includes poetry, criticism, theatre writing and novels. A prize-winning poet, her fantasy novels have been published internationally to critical and popular acclaim. Her most recent books are the YA novel Black Spring (Walker Books) and the poetry collection Theatre (Salt Publishing).
Ben Cubby
Ben Cubby is Environment Editor at The Sydney Morning Herald.
Meredith Curnow
Meredith Curnow was the director of the Sydney Writers’ Festival from its inaugural event in 1998 until 2002. She then joined Random House Australia as an associate publisher and is now the Knopf Vintage publisher. Her list includes fiction and narrative nonfiction.
Christopher Currie
I am a writer from Brisbane, whose first book was The Ottoman Motel. I maintain a blog called Furious Horses. I am writing a new book about a man who falls off a mountain.
Andre Dao
André Dao is a writer of fiction and non-fiction. His work has appeared in Meanjin, Going Down Swinging, Crikey, Harvest Magazine, The Lifted Brow,Voiceworks, Kill Your Darlings, and Arena Magazine. He was the winner of Express Media’s Best Non-Fiction Piece in 2012. André is the Editor-in-Chief of Right Now, a human rights media organisation, and The Emerging Writer in 2013.
Zoe Dattner
Zoe is the creative director and co-founder of Sleepers Publishing and the President of the Small Press Network. She consults and writes regularly on publishing issues and lectures in digital publishing at NMIT.
Emiko Davies
I am a food writer, now based in Melbourne with my sommelier husband after spending seven years in Tuscany. I have a thing for historical cookbooks and regional Italian cuisine, which I indulge on my blog. At other times, I’m eating my way through restaurants for some leading food guides.
Sian Davies
Directing in television, Sian has worked on award winning dramas such as Satisfaction (Showtime), Rush and Offspring (Southern Star). She is developing a feature adaptation of the Booker Prize nominated novel Carry Me Down by M.J. Hyland with the assistance of Film Victoria.
Oslo Davis
Oslo Davis is an illustrator and cartoonist. Oslo has drawn for various publications worldwide, including the New York Times, Meanjin, The Age, Readings Monthly, BusinessWeek, The Big Issue, Sleepers Almanac, Desktop Magazine, Australian Book Review and Art Gallery Guide. In 2011 Oslo was a Walkley Award finalist in the cartoon category.
Joel Deane
Joel Deane is a poet, novelist and speechwriter. He was a finalist for the Melbourne Prize for Literature and shortlisted for the Anne Elder Award for poetry. His most recent book, The Norseman’s Song, was named one of the best novels of 2010 by The Age and RRR.
Lisa Dempster
Lisa Dempster is the Director of the Melbourne Writers Festival.
Keira Dickinson
Co-founder of The Rag and Bone Man Press, promoting up and coming writers and publishing books that open up discussions on global topics. Recently edited Soup Van: stories over a polystyrene cup, a creative collection of stories from Melbourne’s soup vans. Currently producing Recipes & Refuge, stories of immigrants and refugees told through food.
Tom Doig
I am a writer, performer, editor and moron. I have been published in The Big Issue, Maxim and Voiceworks. I have an MA in Hitler Comedy and am currently writing a PhD about climate change. Mörön to Mörön: two men, two bikes, one Mongolian misadventure is my first book.
Lisa D'Onofrio
Lisa D’Onofrio is a literature and literacy activist and facilitator and sometimes poet. She is the owner of a mind that wonders and wanders, occasionally simultaneously.
Robyn Doreian
Editor of three rock music magazines: Hot Metal (Oz), Kerrang! (UK) and Metal Hammer (UK). Currently a freelance journalist for Sunday Life (The Age/Sydney Morning Herald), The Weekly Review, Rolling Stone and British music magazines Terrorizer and Vive Le Rock.
Daniel Ducrou
Daniel Ducrou’s first novel, The Byron Journals (Text Publishing), was shortlisted for both the Australian Vogel Literary Award and the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award. He has been a guest speaker at the Byron Bay Writers’ Festival, the Ubud Writers’ Festival and the Melbourne Writers’ Festival, and his writing has appeared in publications such as The Sleepers Almanac, The Age, The Big Issue and The Review of Australian Fiction. Ducrou is currently working on a second novel called The Sliders.
Fiona Dunne
Fiona Dunne is the National Liaison Officer of The Emerging Writers’ Festival. She lives in Sydney, where she studies creative writing and cultural studies at UTS and collaborates with Seizure, editing Flashers and producing the Seizure podcast. She also edits Vertigo, the UTS student magazine and is a part-time bookseller.
Monica Dux
Monica Dux is a writer, social commentator and author of Things I Didn’t Expect (when I was expecting), and co-author of The Great Feminist Denial, both published by Melbourne University Press. She can be heard regularly on ABC radio and 3RRR, and has published widely, especially on women’s issues. You can find her at monicadux.com.au
Amy Espeseth
Amy Espeseth is the author of Sufficient Grace (Scribe 2012) and Trouble Telling the Weather (Scribe 2014). She is the publisher at Vignette Press (Geek Mook (2012), Fat Mook (2013)) and the Vice-President of the Small Press Network. Amy lectures in both writing and publishing at NMIT.
David Finnigan
David is a writer, theatre-maker and pharmacy assistant based in Cancerra. He is a member of science-theatre company Boho. In 2012 he undertook residencies in the Philippines, Colombia and the UK. David founded and co-produced the Crack Theatre Festival and You Are Here Festivals.
Tim Fisher
A lifelong (yet unrelentingly average) surfer, Tim fulfilled a childhood dream by landing a job at Australia’s Surfing Life, going on to become the magazine’s longest serving editor. After six years on the Gold Coast, Tim returned to Melbourne where he now lectures in journalism at RMIT. His writing has appeared in The Age, Smith Journal, White Horses, triple j Magazine and elsewhere.
Alice Gage
Alice Gage is the editor and publisher of Ampersand Magazine, which she founded in 2007.
Rebecca Giggs
Rebecca Giggs is an essayist and author, whose work often engages with environmental themes. She has been published in literary journals both in Australia and overseas, and her first book is due out with Scribe in early 2014. Rebecca is based in Sydney.
Veronica Gleeson
Since bluffing my way through my first published literary review at 22, I’ve made a living writing for print, theatre, internet and the Australian film industry. I currently work as the Senior Development Executive for Screen Australia, and after an 18 year absence, am rather pleased to be back in Melbourne.
Alaina Gougoulis
Alaina Gougoulis has worked at Text Publishing for four years. Originally in the rights department, she now works in editorial and digital publishing. She is responsible for Text’s social media presence and is behind the @text_publishing Twitter account.
Dave Graney
Dave Graney is an Australian Music presence without peer. Not an icon or a national treasure. He is a living, breathing player who has continued to release an album of music every year for many decades. Number 26 is in the works for 2013. In 2011 he released an artistic memoir, 1001 Australian nights on Affirm press. In 2013 he intends to release “the FUNG”.
Amy Gray
Amy Gray is the sort of person who just can’t shut up, so social media has a godsend for those around her. Through Facebook and Twitter, Amy has debated feminism, politics, TV shows, popular culture and Benedict Cumberbatch. In spite of this, Amy credits social media with helping her writing career.
Alice Grundy
For the past five years I’ve been working with and around book publishing: at a literary agency and trade publishers through to co-founding the biannual magazine Seizure, a launch pad for Australian writing. Currently I am Managing Editor at Giramondo Publishing, Editor-in-Chief of Seizure and live in Sydney.
Alex Hammond
Alex Hammond lives in Melbourne and writes thrillers. Penguin will publish his first novel Blood Witness in July this year. Its sequel will be released in July 2014.
Rebecca Harkins-Cross
Rebecca Harkins-Cross is the film editor for The Big Issue and a theatre critic for The Age. Her writing has appeared across Australia in magazines and journals, and has twice been recognised with awards from the Australian Film Critics Association. You can find her online at rebeccaharkinscross.com.
Steph Harmon
Steph Harmon is the co-editor at Junkee.
Jane Harrison
I have Muruwari heritage but have lived in Melbourne all my life. I combine work as a policy officer in Aboriginal Affairs with a creative life as a playwright, essayist and sometime editor. I firmly believe well-chosen words can be powerful instruments for change.
Angie Hart
Singer-songwriter, Angie Hart, may be best known as the chirpy teenaged front-woman for 90′s indie-pop band, Frente. The sugary peak of this cheery popsicle had to be hit single, ‘Accidentally Kelly Street’. Bedecked in hair-rollers for the video clip, she danced like a rubber band, whilst carrying a giant scrubbing brush. She was hard to miss. Nowadays, she aims to be taken seriously. She has become a writer. Her stories try to be honest and they come from the heart. People still ask her about ‘that’ song.
Melinda Harvey
Melinda Harvey has worked as a literary critic for over a decade, mostly in print but sometimes on radio. In 2012 she was an inaugural Hot Desk Fellow at the Wheeler Centre, working on a piece of creative non-fiction called Lip Service, which explores the real-world uses of literature in times of difficulty. She lectures in literary studies and creative writing at Monash University.
Antonia Hayes
Antonia is a Sydney-based writer who has written for publications all over the world, including The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and Vingt Paris. She previously worked as a book publicist for Random House Australia, and is a Co-Director of National Young Writers’ Festival. Antonia is one of the recipients of the 2013 EWF Digital Mentorship.
Justin Heazlewood
Justin Heazlewood is a writer, musician and humourist described as ‘the Gen-Y commentator it’s okay to like’. Last year he published his first book The Bedroom Philosopher Diaries through Affirm and he is working on a second about being an artist in Australia.
David Henley
David Henley has worked in Australian trade publishing for many years and grown a successful design and publishing studio, written and illustrated two esoteric novellas (The Museum of Unnatural History, Bumbly Foes Forth), one illustrated love poem (The Story So Far), has featured in multiple exhibitions and is the art director and co-founder of Seizure, a magazine for new writing. He is currently finishing a science-fiction trilogy for Harper Voyager, the first book, The Hunt for Pierre Jnr, will be out in June 2013.
Anna Heyward
I work as an advertising and publicity copywriter and journalistic writer. I translate from French to English, and ran the Haplax School of Reading in 2012.
Will Heyward
I’m a writer from Melbourne. I’ve been published in The Weekend Australian, Arena Magazine, the Australian Book Review, and on the website of BOMB Magazine. I’m an editor of Higher Arc, and was previously on the editorial committee of Voiceworks. I work part-time for Readings as a bookseller and a contributor to the Readings Monthly.
Courtney Hocking
Courteney Hocking is a hard-working writer & reformed comedian. She’s worked as the only ladywriter for Good News Week, appeared on ABC1’s Laid and written for The Age and Crikey, as well as co-hosting radio with Daniel Kitson. She’s “whip smart… shrewd & funny” (The Age)
L.K. Holt
L. K. Holt is a graduate in history from the University of Melbourne. Her publications include Stories of Bird (2005), Man Wolf Man (2007) and Patience, Mutiny (2010).
Simone Howell
Simmone Howell is a writer, a collector, a dreamer and a Capricorn. Her latest book is Girl Defective.
Jess Huon
Jess Huon is a Melbourne writer whose first collection of short stories, The Dark Wet was published by Giramondo publishing in 2011. In the last years she has lived and worked between India and Australia, writing and and teaching meditation retreats within both monastic and natural settings. When in Melbourne she co-writes and directs performance pieces with rollercoaster theatre company, comprising actors with intellectual disabilities.
Johannes Jakob
Johannes Jakob is fiction editor at The Lifted Brow and co-hosts the podcast JOMAD I Heard You Like Books? He’s a former editor of Voiceworks and The Victorian Writer.
Balli Jaswal
I grew up in Singapore, Japan, Russia and the Philippines. My debut novel Inheritance was released by Sleepers Publishing in February. My writing and reading interests include multicultural fiction, women’s fiction and migrant experiences. Currently I live in Melbourne and I am working on my second novel.
Erik Jensen
Erik Jensen is the director of special projects at Schwartz Media, publisher of The Monthly. Prior to this he was a journalist at The Sydney Morning Herald, where he filled various roles including summer editor. He has been named the Walkley’s Young Print Journalist of the Year and won the United Nations’ Media Peace Award.
Vanessa Jones
Vanessa is the Program Manager at SA Writers Centre responsible for the organisation’s professional development programs and is also their social media marketing coordinator. Vanessa also works as a freelance copywriter for a variety of clients as well as writing poetry, creative fiction, several blogs and articles. She has previously worked in marketing, project coordination, social media marketing and public relations. In 2011, she was one of the SAWC young ambassadors and was part of the Australian Poetry anthology editorial team. She is also a yoga instructor.
www.jonesthewriter.com
Melanie Joosten
Melanie Joosten is the author of a psychological thriller, Berlin Syndrome, and currently writing her second novel, Gravity Well. She is also working on a collection of literary nonfiction essays about older people and ageing in Australia. She’s been published in Meanjin, Going Down Swinging and the Sleepers Almanac.
Eloise Keating
Eloise Keating is a Melbourne-based journalist and editor, currently headquarterd at Books+Publishing, Australia’s premier source of news about the local book industry. Her writing regularly appears in the Weekly Book Newsletter and Books+Publishing Magazine, and has been known to pop up in Crikey. You can usually tweeting from @ellykeating.
Elmo Keep
Elmo Keep is a writer at the Awl, The Monthly, Meanjin, Scribe and elsewhere. She lives in Ballarat, Victoria.
Your Darlings Kill
Kill Your Darlings is an independent, quarterly publication.
Matthew Knott
Based in Melbourne, Matthew is a journalist at Crikey and The Power Index.
Andy Ko
Andy Ko has written for Westside Publications (2007, 2008, 2009, 2011, 2012) and was a writer and performer for the Sydney Writers’ Festival production Alleyway Honour (2009). He was a forum panellist for Deep Corridors: Writing in the West (2012), and was the technical producer for the literary event Moving People (2012).
Sophie Langley
Sophie Langley writes essays — usually about food, environment, health and wellbeing — and occasionally short fiction. She’s also a yoga teacher. Sophie’s been published in a variety of literary journals, including the EWF’s annual publication, The Emerging Writer, and she blogs at sophielangley.com.
Benjamin Law
Benjamin Law is a Brisbane-based freelance writer. He is a frequent contributor to frankie, Good Weekend, The Monthly and Qweekend and has had stories published in over 50 publications in Australia and worldwide. His debut book – The Family Law (2010) – was shortlisted for Book of the Year at the Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIAs). His latest book – Gaysia: Adventures in the Queer East (2012) – is out now. benjamin-law.com
Lynne Leonhardt
I live in Perth and have travelled extensively. I came relatively late to writing as a mother of four and part-time student of music and literature at UWA. I went on to do a PhD in Writing at ECU. My debut novel, Finding Jasper, was published in November 2012.
Jade Lillie
Jade Lillie is an experienced community cultural development practitioner, arts executive and educator. She has lived and worked across Australia and SE Asia in arts, cultural and international development contexts. In 2009, Jade was the recipient of the Kirk Robson Award acknowledging young cultural leaders. Until recently, Jade was living in Thailand and returned to Australia to join the Footscray Community Arts Centre team as the Director and CEO.
Stephanie Linder
Stephanie Linder is a performer and a Project Officer at Centre of Excellence at NMIT.
Kim Lock
After growing up in country South Australia, Kim Lock has lived in Darwin, Melbourne and Canberra, and now resides near Adelaide with her military husband and their two young children. Although she has been writing her whole life, Peace, Love and Khaki Socks is her first novel.
Ghita Loebenstein
Ghita Loebenstein is the founder of Speakeasy Cinema.
Astrid Lorange
Poet, researcher, teacher, essayist, home brewer, band member, small press aspirant, part-time book indexer, relational enthusiast.
Nic Low
Nic Low is a NZ-born, Melbourne-based writer, artist and organiser. Recent work has appeared in Griffith REVIEW, The Monthly, The Big Issue, The Lifted Brow, Cordite, Art Monthly and Australian Book Review. He won a 2011 GREW Prize for non-fiction, and was shortlisted in the 2012 Commonwealth Short Story Prize.
Wayne Macauley
I have been writing for some time. My first story was published in 1992 and my latest in December last year. I have also had three novels published, most recently The Cook in 2011. My stories were collected and published in 2010 under the title Other Stories. I have a novel due out next year.
Lily Mae Martin
Lily Mae Martin is an internationally exhibited artist. Her work has been published in Juxtapoz magazine, Empty, Curvy, Semi- Permanent, Going Down Swinging, The Lifted Brow, Kill Your Darlings, Azuria Journal and Cottonmouth. She explores the relationship between art and motherhood, the body, identity and the domestic. She also writes Berlin Domestic.
Marc Martin
Marc Martin is an illustrator based in Melbourne, Australia. He is the author and illustrator of three books, Silent Observer (Erm Books), A Forest (Penguin Books), and The Curious Explorers Guide to Exotic Animals A-Z (Penguin Books). His work can be found at www.marcmartin.com.au.
Walter Mason
Walter Mason is a travel writer and speaker with a special interest in spirituality. His first book, Destination Saigon, was named one of the 10 best travel books of 2010.
Catherine McCredie
Catherine McCredie is a freelance book editor, specialising in children’s and YA fiction, and is a former senior editor at Penguin Books.
Catherine McInnis
Catherine McInnis is deputy editor of Meanjin and works in digital marketing for Melbourne University Publishing.
Laura Jean McKay
Laura Jean McKay is an award-winning writer best known for smearing cat food all over herself on stage. Despite this, she is published in Best Australian Stories, Sleepers, The Big Issue and Women of Letters and in 2011 she won the Alan Marshall Award. She is a PhD candidate at The University of Melbourne and her short story collection Holiday in Cambodia will be published by Black Inc. in July 2013.
Martin McKenzie-Murray
Martin McKenzie-Murray is a columnist for The Age, an award-winning blogger and former speechwriter. In addition to Fairfax ‘papers, his writing has appeared in The Monthly, The Griffith Review, Crikey and The Drum. His first book will be published by Scribe in 2014.
Rob Meldrum
Rob Meldrum is an actor, director and has lectured at the School of Drama at the VCA for over nine years.
Jennifer Mills
Jennifer Mills is the author of two novels, Gone and The Diamond Anchor, and a collection of short stories, The Rest is Weight. Her work has received wide critical acclaim and won numerous awards both nationally and internationally. In 2012 she was named a Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Australian novelist. She lives in regional South Australia and is currently the fiction editor at Overland.
Georgia Moodie
Georgia is a radiophile pure and simple. She started at Melbourne’s SYN, and then studied radio documentary at the Salt Institute in the United States. Georgia is now a producer on ABC Radio National’s Drive program and is also a supervising producer for award-winning radio storytelling program All the Best.
Annabelle Murphy
Annabelle Murphy is the writer and director of several independent film and television productions. Two of her works, SCARS and Margaret Star: A Fall from Grace were nominated for AFI Awards and she has been awarded as a filmmaker both in Australia and internationally.
Jenny Niven
Jenny Niven is Associate Director and Head of Programming at The Wheeler Centre for Books, Writing and Ideas in Melbourne. Over the last ten years she has worked in arts programming in Scotland, NYC, China and Australia, including as co-creator and inaugural director of Beijing’s first international literary festival.
Thang Ngo
Thang Ngo publishes popular food blogs, noodlies – named one of Australia’s best food blogs by JamieOliver.com . He has an eye for the un-orthodox, avoiding “boring” mainstream. Blogging had led to traditional media work including features and opinion pieces for the Sydney Morning Herald, SBS Feast Magazines and ABC’s The Drum. He also reviews for Fairfax’s Good Food Under $30.
Ella O’Keefe
Ella O’Keefe lives in Melbourne and is a doctoral candidate at Deakin University, with a thesis on the work of poets Barbara Guest and Veronica Forrest-Thomson. Her poems have appeared in Steamer, Overland and Best Australian Poems 2011. Her radio work has been broadcast on 2SER FM, FBI Radio and ABC Radio National.
Thuy On
Thuy On is a Melbourne-based writer, editor, manuscript assessor and reviewer. She has reviewed books for fifteen odd years for numerous publications including The Age, The Australian, Books + Publishing and Australian Book Review. She has also reviewed theatre, film and comedy. She is currently the Books Editor of The Big Issue.
Ryan O’Neill
I was born in Scotland and I lived and worked as an English language teacher for a number of years in Rwanda, China and Lithuania before settling in Australia. My short stories have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, and my latest collection is The Weight of a Human Heart published by Black Inc. Currently I teach English Literature and Film at the University of Newcastle.
Ross Onley-Zerkel
Ross’ artistic process is very much about engaging with the deaf community through the arts. Ross has initiated and coordinated many projects in collaboration with the Deaf community including Deaf Can Dance, Digital Storytelling, and The Deaf Writers Program – Through Deaf Eyes. Most recently Ross has coordinated Light in Winter’s ‘Reading the Body’ Symphony of Signing at Federation Square.
Mandy Ord
Mandy Ord is a Melbourne based comic artist and illustrator. Her stories appear in a broad range of local and international literary journals, newspapers, books and anthologies. In 2008 her first graphic novel Rooftops was published by Finlay Lloyd. Her second book of comic stories published by Allen & Unwin in August 2011, Sensitive Creatures, was selected as a White Raven at the 2012 Bologna Book Fair. As well as producing comics Mandy also presents talks and runs comic educational workshops for schools, universities and community groups.
Eileen Ormsby,
Former lawyer Eileen Ormsby now scratches out a living as a freelance writer, with regular features in The Age and the occasional appearance in Kill Your Darlings. Her blog, allthingsvice.com, recently led to a book contract, but until the royalties start rolling in, corporate writing pays the bills.
Tony Palmer
Tony Palmer has worked as a book designer for various publishers since 1987 designing books for children and adults. He has also worked as a design teacher both in Australia and the United States and in 2007 he had his first novel for teenagers published, Break of Day.
Anna Poletti
Anna Poletti lectures in Literary Studies at Monash University. She volunteers at the Sticky Institute, and is the author of Intimate Ephemera: Reading Young Lives in Australian Zine Culture (Melbourne University Press). Her research interest is autobiography beyond the book.
Peter Polites
Afflicted with the historical disruption of contested immigrant names and an assimiliationist body politic the nurses couldn’t pronounce his real name Panagioti. Mother smoked Holidays when pregnant and baptised him in the Ionian after bathing him in olive oil. Primary school in a now aspirational Sydney suburb and high school in western Sydney. His mother was an assistant Librarian (communist) and his father was a metalworker (fascist). Country is the mountain village of Katouna on island that was once under Venetian occupation.
Rose Powell
Rose Powell is a writer and journalist. She’s been working as a freelance features writer for three years and is a part-time contributor with Private Media. She is the coordinator of the annual Best Australian Blogs Competition, which she launched for the Australian Writers’ Centre in 2011. She also coordinates the public program of events and festivals for the NSW Writers’ Centre.
Michael GF Prior
Michael GF Prior is a Melbourne based artist and sound recordist. Michael works with any media to create gallery installations, site-specific performances and publications. He has exhibited and performed throughout Australia, Asia, Europe and the United States. He has recently finished sound design work with the incredible Yijala Yala project in WA and is currently engaged in solo sculptural practice. Chronox, his collaboration with Lachlan Conn, will present two major installation works in Melbourne between June and September 2013.
Bhakthi Puvanenthiran
Bhakthi Puvanenthiran is a broadcaster (RRR), facilitator (Express Media) and editor (Going Down Swinging). She also dabbles in the dark arts of programming festivals (Melbourne Writers’ Festival and National Young Writers’ Festival).
Kate Richards
Kate is a writer and poet, doctor and wilderness lover. Her memoir, Madness, was published by Penguin Books in 2013. It is the true story of a journey from chaos to balance, and limbo to meaning.
Josephine Rowe
Writer of stories, most of them very short. Repairer of typewriters. Translator of cats. Her latest short story collection, Tarcutta Wake, is available through UQP.
James Roy
James Roy is the author of over thirty books for young people. Some of them have even won or been shortlisted for some pretty big awards. Each year he visits about fifty schools both here and overseas, talking to kids about how and why he does what he does.
Vanessa Russell
Vanessa Russell used to read the entire Bible once a year – including the New Testament twice. Now she doesn’t. Her first novel, Holy Bible, will be published by Sleepers in July 2013. Her memoir about escaping from a man who turns abusive after she falls pregnant with her son is called Hagued and will be published by Hardie Grant in 2014.
Penni Russon
Penni Russon is fascinated by adolescence and the intersection that exists in that period of life between language, bodies, imagination, poetry, sexuality, and ideas, which is why she writes literary fiction for teenagers. Her most recent novel, Only Ever Always, won the Aurealis, the Ethel Turner prize and the WA Premier’s Award.
Samuel Rutter
Samuel Rutter is a PhD candidate in Spanish, researching the fiction of Roberto Bolaño. He has published translations from the French and the Spanish, as well as interviews and critical essays on the work of contemporary Latin American authors including Alejandro Zambra, Daniel Sada, and César Aira. He teaches in the School of Languages at the University of Melbourne.
Brendan Ryan
Brendan Ryan grew up on a dairy farm in Western Victoria as one of ten children. He has had four collections of poetry published, the most recent being Travelling Through the Family(Hunter Publishers).A recent essay on his footy upbringing has been published in Footy Town. He lives in Geelong.
Luke Ryan
Freelance writer, comedian and man about town. I write short-form non-fiction with a comic edge and am currently working on my debut book, I Guess You’re Only as Sick as You Feel, a comedy memoir about having had cancer a couple of times due for release through Scribe Publications in early 2014 . Work has appeared in The Vine, Smith Journal, Crikey, The Lifted Brow, Kill Your Darlings, Time Out and many others.
John Safran
John Safran is an award winning documentary maker, comedian, radio broadcaster and writer. His television series’ have seen him travel the world exploring topics such as religion and race, pushing boundaries and getting into his fair share of controversy. He presents a weekly show on Triple J with Father Bob.
Ellena Savage
Ellena Savage writes and edits nonfiction about political culture and the arts for The Lifted Brow, SPOOK Magazine, and is a columnist at Eureka Street. Her 2012 essay ‘A Man Like Luai’ won the Tharunka Non-fiction prize and received mixed internet reviews. You can find her at ellenasavage.com.
Ronnie Scott
Ronnie Scott is a contributor to The Believer, Meanjin, the Australian, and ABC Radio National. In 2007 he founded The Lifted Brow, and nowadays serves as art editor.
Martin Shaw
Martin Shaw is the Books Division Manager of Melbourne’s Readings bookshop chain.
Leni Shilton
Leni Shilton grew up in Papua New Guinea and Melbourne. She has lived and worked in Central Australia for many years. She is an award winning poet and writer of short creative non-fiction. Her work is published widely in anthologies and journals and broadcast on PoeticA.
Graeme Simsion
Graeme Simsion is author of The Rosie Project, winner of the 2012 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript, and was published by Text Publishing.
Norton Lefa Singleton
Lefa is the Creative Producer at Express Media. She co-founded Limited News, founded magazines The Pun and The Pundit, is a former editor of Green magazine and a freelance writer. She got her start editing student paper Rabelais, and went on to direct the National Student and Emerging Media Conference.
Canoe Readings Slow
Melbourne-based Slow Canoe Readings presents the best new narratives, live.
Anna Solding
Anna Solding’s first novel The Hum of Concrete was nominated for the People’s Choice Award and longlisted for the prestigious Commonwealth Book Prize. Anna has been published widely and holds a PhD in Creative Writing. She is the founder and managing director of MidnightSun Publishing. Chocolate is her downfall.
Alicia Sometimes
Alicia Sometimes is an Australian writer, award-winning poet, broadcaster, musician and has toured nationally and internationally with her poetry. She hosts 3RRR’s Aural Text and is a fortnightly books presenter on Rafael Epstein’s Drive program on ABC 774. She has two poetry collections, kissing the curve and Soundtrack.
Rebecca Starford
Rebecca Starford is the editor and co-founder of Kill Your Darlings. She was deputy editor at Australian Book Review and is now associate publisher at Affirm Press. She regularly publishes in The Age and The Australian. She was also a founding member for the steering committee for The Stella Prize.
Jill Stark
Jill Stark is a senior writer with The Sunday Age and author of the memoir High Sobriety: My Year Without Booze. Born and raised in Scotland, she now lives in Melbourne, having joined The Age in 2006, predominantly covering health and specialising in alcohol and drug issues, mental health, and public-health policy.
Emily Stewart
Emily Stewart is currently based in Melbourne, where she works as an editor. In 2012, she was the blog editor for Cordite Poetry Review, and chatted about bibliodiversity and speculative publishing futures at SPN’s inaugural Independent Publisher’s Conference. Her poetry and short fiction has been published locally and abroad, and she’s currently at work on a number of projects, including a set of assemblage poems. Some of these can be found at pluswon.tumblr.com. She tweets while waiting for the train: @stewEmily
Emmett Stinson
Emmett Stinson is writer and literary critic. His collection of short stories, Known Unknowns (2010), was shortlisted for the Steele Rudd Award in the Queensland Premier’s Literary Awards. He is a Lecturer in Publishing at the University of Melbourne.
Sam Strong
Sam Strong is Associate Artistic Director at the Melbourne Theatre Company.
Estelle Tang
Estelle Tang is an editor at Oxford University Press, editorial advisor at Paper Radio and program advisor at Melbourne Writers Festival. She is former online editor at Kill Your Darlings and a freelance writer.
Phoebe Tay
Phoebe works as a Teacher of the Deaf and is a freelance columnist. She blogs at http://phoebetay.wordpress.com/
Nick Tapper
Nick Tapper was until recently the editor of the film and media magazines Metro and Screen Education, and is now working towards a Master’s degree on literature and uncertainty. His infrequent writing focuses on the politics and poetics of art and culture.
Simon Tedeschi
Simon Tedeschi is primarily known as a concert pianist but is also growing in stature as a writer across a broad range of mediums. In recent times, he has written for the Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian, SBS Feast Magazine, The Drum and Daily Life. He is currently working on a collection of short stories reflecting the experience of an artist in modern day Australia.
Sam Twyford-Moore
Sam Twyford-Moore is a writer of fiction and non-fiction. He is the current Director of the Emerging Writers’ Festival. He also hosts The Rereaders podcast (www.therereaders.com).
Alice Ülgezer
Made in Turkey, born in London, grown in Australia, Alice Melike Ülgezer is a novelist, poetess and sometimes musician. She draws on her mixed cultural heritage and Islamic Mysticism to nourish her creative craft.
Jenny Valentish
Jenny Valentish is editor of Time Out Melbourne. She previously edited Triple J Magazine and has held subbing, editing and writing roles at Australian and UK magazines, dating all the way back to the fanzine that got her into a whole heap of trouble in her teens.
Shilt, Stephanie Van
Stephanie Van Schilt is the Online Editorial Assistant at Kill Your Darlings and a freelance writer who loves all things pop culture. She’s written for Junkee, Killings and Cineaste. She tweets at @steph_adele.
Miles Vertigan
Miles Vertigan is a fictional writer. His novel Life Kills was published in 2011 by Sleepers Publishing and has been optioned for a movie. He has had short stories published in The Sleepers Almanac, Going Down Swinging and Wet Ink and his short story Saving Lives was recorded and broadcast by ABC Radio National’s Airplay. He enjoys breathing, teaching his cats to tap dance and obsessively rewriting himself.
Chi Vu
Chi Vu was born in Vietnam and came to Australia in 1979. After studying at the University of Melbourne, she worked as a theatre director, dramaturge, writer, artistic director and policy officer. Chi Vu’s plays include the critically acclaimed and widely studied ‘Vietnam: a Psychic Guide.’ Her prose works appear in various publications, including Growing Up Asian in Australia and The Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature. Her novella Anguli Ma: a Gothic Tale is published by Giramondo. www.chi-vu.com
Corey Wakeling
Corey Wakeling lives in Melbourne. He is a PhD candidate and tutor at the University of Melbourne. His first full-length collection of poems is Goad Omens (Giramondo, 2013)
Ben Walter
Ben Walter’s writing has appeared in Island, Famous Reporter, Overland and Cordite. He is the author of Below Tree Level, editor of the award-winning anthology I Sleep in Haysheds and Corners, and was recently shortlisted for the University of Tasmania Prize for an unpublished literary work. @ben_walter.
Jeff Waters
Jeff Waters is a senior journalist on ABC TV′s 7 o′clock news. He has worked as a multi-platform journalist whose reports on international politics, human rights and social justice have been broadcast in 20 countries. His material regularly broadcast on 7.30, Lateline, Landline, Inside Business and Newsline with Jim Middleton, and radio current affairs shows AM, PM, The World Today and Correspondents’ Report. As well as The Canberra Times, Jeff has written for Australian Associated Press, Singapore’s Straits Times, the ABC’s The Drum website, and many other publications. In 2008, he published his first book, Gone for a Song, A Death in Custody on Palm Island which was followed in 2012 with Every Beat of My Heart, about his recovery from cardiac arrest.
Alan Weedon
Alan Weedon is a Melbourne based freelance writer/photographer. He’s in his second year of Journalism at RMIT, and is the EP of SYN Media’s Arts programme, Arts Mitten. He’s also on the editorial committee for Voiceworks and Mary Journal. You can tweet him at @YoungBludDesigns
Mark Welker
Mark Welker is a short fiction writer and filmmaker based in Melbourne. His writing has appeared in such journals as Meanjin and Griffith Review. His films, through studio Commoner, have appeared on Boing Boing, Gizmodo, Devour and Vimeo Staff Picks.
Katie Williams
Katie Williams is co-director of the Freeplay Independent Games Festival, and a games journalist and critic. Her work encompasses thoughtful, analytical criticism of the gaming’s influence on a wider cultural context. Her writing appears regularly in local and international publications, such as IGN, GameSpy, PC PowerPlay, HYPER, Atomic, and Kotaku.
Jessica L. Wilkinson
Jessica L. Wilkinson is the founding editor of RABBIT: a journal for non-fiction poetry. Her poetic work, marionette: a biography of miss marion davies, was published by Vagabond Press in 2012. She has performed marionette, as a collaboration with composer Simon Charles, with chamber ensemble Manteia in Melbourne and Sydney. She holds a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Melbourne and is Lecturer in Creative and Professional Writing at RMIT University.
Lili Wilkinson
Lili is the author of novels such as Scatterheart, Pink, Angel Fish and A Pocketful of Eyes. She is studying for her PhD and lives in Melbourne.
Caroline Wood
Caroline has a double degree in Art History and Psychology from Oxford Brooks University . Since 2010, she has been Director of Margaret River Press and has been responsible for producing all its publications.
Jacinda Woodhead
Jacinda is deputy editor at Overland. She is in the midst of a narrative nonfiction PhD investigating abortion in Australia, and nonfiction as political intervention. She writes essays, blog posts, criticism and short stories, and has published in Crikey, The Drum, Meanjin, Overland and Left Turn: political essays for the New Left.
Fiona Wright
Fiona Wright’s work has been published in Best Australian Poems 2008, 2009 and 2010 (Black Inc). Her first collection is Knuckled (Giramondo, 2011). Fiona is currently a doctoral candidate with the University of Western Sydney Writing & Society Research Centre.
Damon Young
Damon Young is a philosopher and writer. Damon is the author of Distraction (MUP) and, most recently, Philosophy in the Garden (MUP). He has written for The Age, Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian, the ABC and the BBC, and is a frequent radio guest. Damon has also published poetry and short fiction.
