Paul Adkin is a British-born writer with a degree in Drama and English. He grew up in Melbourne, Australia, and, after graduating in 1979, worked as a playwright, director and actor. One of his plays, The Jack and Jill Story, has been published (Australian Nouveau Theatre, 1981) and performed in three countries. Since 1986, Paul has been living in Madrid. He has written a number of short stories, one of which, ‘The Benevolent Farmer’, won a competition in a European newspaper. Several other stories have been translated and published in Spain. In 1994 Paul set up his own theatre company in Madrid, Ñu Teatro www.nuteatro.com . He now writes in Spanish as well as English and he is the editor and a contributor to a cultural magazine in Spanish called Ñu Ñuz; A copy of the magazine can be found on-line here: http://es.calameo.com/read/0002746476ca2756a9cc4. He has an amateur interest in philosophy and apart from theatre, short fiction, long fiction and essays, he also writes aphorisms.
Miles Allinson is an artist of word, film and image. Mundane biographical details may follow in the near future. Until then you might want to see more of his art or read his words at his blog A Confrontation with Falling.
Ivy Alvarez is the author of Mortal (Washington, DC: Red Morning Press, 2006). A recipient of writing residencies from MacDowell Colony (USA), Hawthornden Castle (UK) and Fundacion Valparaiso (Spain), her poetry is publishing in journals and anthologies in many countries and online. www.ivyalvarez.com
Karen Andrews is an award-winning short story writer and poet, children’s book author, blogger, and publisher at Miscellaneous Press.
Daniel Armstrong is a photo-media, installation artist and tertiary lecturer. His current research explores relationships between photography and astronomy with a specific interest in how scientific imaging both falters and succeeds at the edge of representation and relationships of the body to space and visualisation of the cosmos. He is also interested in the historical relationships between photography and astronomy, the lens and the telescope and the cultural and philosophical implications of these relationships. Other research interests include the illuminated image, suburbia and contemporary culture, the architectural, sound and video and sensor-triggered installation art. He exhibits and present conference papers on a regular basis. In June and July 2009 he undertook an Australia Council residency at a number Astronomical Observatories in the USA. He lives in the rural Victoria where he spends his nights imaging the dark skies with homemade and primitive cameras and telescopes. He is currently undertaking a fine art PhD at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, University in Melbourne.
Cassandra Atherton is a Lecturer in Literary Studies and Creative Writing at Deakin University. She has published a book of literary criticism, Flashing Eyes and Floating Hair: A Study of Gwen Harwood’s Pseudonymous Poetry (Australian Scholarly Press, 2007), a book of poetry, After Lolita (Ahadada Press, 2010), and a novel, The Man Jar (Printed Matter Press, 2010).
Sunil Badami has written for publications including The Sydney Morning Herald, Good Weekend, The Australian, The Australian Literary Review, Southerly, Seizure and Meanjin. His work has been published in Australia and overseas, including in Best Australian Stories and Best Australian Essays. He is writing his first novel.
Jeremy Balius was born in Dallas, Texas, raised in Gießen, Germany, educated in Los Angeles, California, and now resides in Perth, Western Australia. He looks after Black Rider Press and hangs out with the Cottonmouth kids. He writes for the last of the red hot lovers.
S. Van Berkel: ‘I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together.’- John Lennon. Conspiracy theorists would say this line is a confession that Paul McCartney is dead. S. Van Berkel likes to see it as a devaluing of the individual ego. In line with this she doesn’t have much to say here, except that if you like her writing you can see more at Grotesque Gleams. As for the conspiracy theory, she couldn’t care less. Paul McCartney or no Paul McCartney, ‘I Am the Walrus’ is a damn good song.
Neil Boyack was born in 1967, and adopted six-months later. He was married in Las Vegas in 1997 and has kids. He lives with his family on solar power in the Victorian bush and gets money from social work. His stories have been translated into French and Chinese. Previous short story collections are Black, Snakeskin-Vanilla, See through and the acclaimed collection from 2003 Transactions. Neil is the director and creator of the Newstead Short Story Tattoo.
Gabrielle Bryden is an Australian writer and poet published in Australian and international journals and books including Short and Twisted 2010, Mystic Signals; Ripples, Aspects, Speedpoets, and Extempore; the Cherry Blossom Review, Asphodel Madness, Sorcerous Signals, Lunarosity, Bolts of Silk, Third Eye, Specusphere, and Poetry2; and on local and national ABC Radio. She blogs poetry, stories and life here.
Elizabeth Bryer’s writing has previously appeared in HEAT, harvest and Kill Your Darlings and she blogs at Plume of Words.
Robyn Cadwallader is an editor and writer who lives in the country outside Canberra. Her short stories and poems have appeared in Australian journals including Wet Ink, Westerly and Famous Reporter, and her first collection of poetry, i painted unafraid, was published by Wakefield Press in 2010. In 2011 she was awarded the Byron Bay Writers Festival Varuna Lit Link Unpublished Manuscript Award for ‘Anchoress’ and her short play, Artemisia, was performed at the Adelaide Fringe, in the Melbourne and Sydney (2012) Short + Sweet festivals. Her short story, ‘The Day for Travelling’, won the 2011 Marjorie Graber-McGinnis Short Story Award. She has taught medieval literature and creative writing at Flinders University and her academic study of a dragon-slaying virgin martyr was published by Mellen Press in 2008.
Susie Campbell lives just outside London, England where she runs a small arts organisation (www.sumiartworking.net) with her partner as well as working full time in education. She writes and performs poetry, both short individual poems and more extended dramatic pieces of poetry. In 2009, she took her one-woman show ‘Emptymouthing’ to the Edinburgh Fringe festival. A 10-minute piece of her poetry forms the soundscape to an installation that is part of ‘Muerto de Amor’, an exhibition to celebrate the life and work of Federico Garcia Lorca currently showing in London. She runs her own local poetry night which provides a platform for both experienced and ‘new’ poets and performs regularly at poetry events around London.
Dr Leslie Cannold is an author, commentator, ethicist and activist. Her books include the award-winning The Abortion Myth and What, No Baby? which made the Australian Financial Review’s top 101 books list. Her first novel, The Book of Rachael was published in 2011 by Text. Leslie is often noted as one of Australia’s leading thinkers. In 2005 she was listed alongside Professor Peter Singer, Professor Gustav Nossal and Inga Clendinnen as one of Australia’s top 20 public intellectuals. She was a finalist in the best science tweet contest for Science Week 2010. In 2011 she was made Australian Humanist of the Year.
Ashley Capes teaches Media and English in Victoria. He moderates collaborative renku site Issa’s Snail and looks after kipple, a simple poetry blog. In addition to this he co-ordinates collaborative verse site The Poetry Slave and is leading the Zombie Renga at Cordite Poetry Review. His new poetry collection Stepping Over Seasons was released by Interactive Press in 2009 and most recently, his poetry has appeared in Red Leaves in both English and Japanese. Ashley very occasionally dabbles in film, has fronted a band and is addicted Studio Ghibli films. He is constantly awed by the simple beauty of haiku.
Ben Carmichael, writer and student, beats out tunes on the cracked kettle of human language, but unlike Flaubert, has yet to get those bears dancing. Some of his ditties can be found in Voiceworks and LiMP, and more of his false notes and (dis)chords accumulate at Bootless Inquisitions, where they create a pleasing cacophony.
Jo Case is associate editor of Kill Your Darlings and co-editor of The Big Issue Fiction Edition 2011. She is a former books editor of The Big Issue and deputy editor of Australian Book Review, and is a freelance writer and reviewer. She is currently working on her first book, which will be published by Hardie Grant.
Shane Jesse Christmass is a Perth-born, Melbourne-based writer. In 2006 he was runner-up in The Age Short Story Competition with his entry Remaking the Image of the World which the newspaper’s literary editor, Jason Steger, called a “highly inventive story, chocked with surrealistic allusion, nightmare imagery and psychological menace” … In 2008 Paroxysm Press published an anthology of his short stories called Croak & Grist … He’s also published a number of stories including ‘Shut Down the Pick Up’ (Waste, 2004, Paroxysm Press), ‘5’, (Shotgun, 2006, Paroxysm Press), ‘The Arvo & Early Evening of the Axe’, (10 Years that Didn’t Kill Us, 2008, Paroxysm Press), ‘The Charnel Stink Within’, (Mini Shots, 2008, Vignette Press) and “Cold to the Point Past Death”, (Red Cent Publishing, 2010) … His poetry has featured in the journals New Wave Vomit, amphibi.us, Cordite, one-eight vulture, dotdotdash and The Diamond & the Thief, as well as sound poetry in the Atlanta journal, As Long As It Takes. He’s just completed his first public reading of his screenplay, Orderly, at the inaugural Lion Pie Laboratory in Sydney. He edits the journal Queen Vic Knives.
Maxine Beneba Clarke is a West Indian-Australian writer & poetry slam champion. Her essays, fiction & short stories have been broadcast & published nationally, including in Voiceworks, the Age, the Big Issue, Overland, Kunapipi, Peril & Going Down Swinging, on 3CR radio’s Spoken Word and Hip Sista Hop and on RRR radio’s Aural Text and Max Headroom. Maxine’s second poetry collection Gil Scott Heron is on Parole was published by Picaro Press in 2010.
David Cohen is the author of the novel Fear of Tennis. His short stories have appeared in such publications as HQ, Meanjin, Westerly, Wet Ink, Readings and Writings, and the Australian Book Review. He lives in Brisbane, and teaches writing at the University of Queensland.
Jennifer Compton lives in Carrum in Melbourne with her husband, Matthew O’Sullivan. She is a poet and playwright who also writes prose. Her ms, This City, won the Kathleen Grattan Award in NZ and will be published by Otago University Press in July. Her stage play, The Third Age, which she completed while she was Visiting Literary Artist at Massey University in 2010, is looking for a production.
Craig Cormick is an award-winning Canberra author. He has published over a dozen books, including eight collections of short fiction. He will have two books published in 2011: In Bed With Douglas Mawson: Travels in Antarctica, based on an an Antarctic Arts Fellowship he received in 2008, and Saved from the Sea, a collection of essays on shipwreck survivors. Captain Cook is a recurring theme in several of his stories, and ‘The Last Island in the World’ is from a work of linked stories that seems to eternally be in progress, The Seven Voyage of Captain Cook.
Nathan Curnow is a poet, playwright and performer who has toured Australia and New Zealand and been heard widely on ABC radio. With further assistance from the Australia Council he is currently writing a new play based upon convict stories and escape myths. He is the author of The Ghost Poetry Project, a collection of poetry released by Puncher & Wattman. A father of four young children, poet Nathan Curnow became increasingly interested in how language works to both terrify and embolden us. This was most apparent when his daughter became afraid of bunyips, a fear that could not be relieved by any amount of her parents’ loving persuasion. After months of sleepless nights it was suddenly undone by the words of another child who told her that bunyips only eat avocadoes. He is the most recent winner of the prestigious Josephine Ulrick Poetry Prize and is an editor of Going Down Swinging.
Christopher Currie is a 29-year-old writer from Brisbane. The Ottoman Motel is his first novel. You can find more of his work at Furious Horses.
Eric Yoshiaki Dando was born in Japan in 1970. He is an idiot. (For a less biased bio go to his Wiki Bio and for more of his work go to his blog.)
Zoe Dattner is General Manager of SPUNC, the Small Press Network, and Creative Director of Sleepers Publishing.
Rjurik Davidson has written short stories, essays, screenplays and reviews. His collection The Library of Forgotten Books will soon be published by PS Publishing. He was has won a number of awards and is currently associate editor of Overland magazine.
Demet Divaroren has a diploma in professional writing and editing from Victoria University. Her short stories have appeared in Island magazine and Scribe’s New Australian Stories anthology. Demet’s first novel Orayt was shortlisted in the 2008 Australian/Vogel literary award. She is represented by Curtis Brown Literary agents and lives in the northern suburbs of Melbourne.
Callie Doyle-Scott would love to write historical fiction for a living, but for the moment is thoroughly enjoying cutting her teeth as a project editor for Verity La. She’s self-published several essays for the CLIO online history journal, as well as a few short stories here and there, including a contribution to a self-published anthology of short stories entitled Around About Town. She’s currently in her final year of a Creative Writing Degree at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT).
Daniel East is an Australian writer currently working in Sydney publishing game reviews on Square-Go (square-go.com) and theatre reviews on media culture reviews (reviews.media-culture.org.au). He is a graduate of the University of Wollongong’s Creative Writing program and his poetry and non-fiction have appeared in Cordite, Mascara, Voiceworks, Red River Review and are soon to appear in PAN Magazine and cutthroat. His play Sexy Tales of Paleontology (co-written with Patrick Lenton) won the 2010 Sydney Fringe Comedy Award and he is a member of Australia’s only performance-poetry boyband, The Bracket Creeps.
Stu Hatton’s debut collection of poems is How to be Hungry. His work has appeared in The Age, Overland, Cordite and elsewhere. He has also been known to blog at www.stuhatton.net. He lives in Melbourne.
Peter Farrar has probably done more Biology than writing in 2011 due to the VCE student residing in his house. Despite that, between learning about the cell structure of bacteria, he has reached the second draft of a novel. In 2010 his collection of short stories The Nine Flaws of Affection was published through Ginninderra Press.
Duncan Felton is writer and editor living in Canberra. He is a co-coordinator of Scissors Paper Pen, a Canberra creative collective that does many things, notably a quarterly evening of storytelling, music, discussion and more. Duncan’s had worked published in Voiceworks, Block, BMA, Next Wave 2010’s Text Camp Reader and You Are Here 2012’s Mall Stories. Bloggings at duncanwritingeditingpublishing.wordpress.com and writings inspired by found ephemera at sufaj.wordpress.com.
SJ Finn’s novel This Too Shall Pass is about to be released by Sleepers Publishing. Her short fiction appears in Going Down Swinging, Sleepers Almanac and as a mini shot for Vignette Press. Her poem ‘War Through The TV’ was included in The Best Australian Poems 2010. She has a website at www.sjfinn.com
David Finnigan is a pharmacy assistant, theatre-maker and festival director from the Cancers, Australia. More than thirty of David’s one-act and full-length playscripts have been produced by theatres in Australia, the Philippines and the USA. David was 2006 Writer-in-Residence for Tanghalang Pilipino, the key government-funded theatre company in the Philippines. He co-founded interactive science-theatre ensemble Boho Interactive and the Crack Theatre Festival, and was the Creative Producer for the inaugural You Are Here festival in Canberra in 2011. David is curled up online at http://blind-dragonfly.com
Finnigan and Brother is the duo of siblings Chris (guitar/FX) and David Finnigan (words/radio/visuals). Finnigan and Brother first performed live at the 2009 Multicultural Fringe Festival in the Cancers. Their work featured in the launch edition of digital zine Goofbang, and their music has been featured on Sydney’s FBI Radio by New Weird Australia and Sunday Night at the Movies. More at http://blind-dragonfly.com/?p=633
Tristan Foster is a writer from Sydney. He twitters here.
David Francis, originally from Australia, has lived mostly in the United States since 1985. His first novel Agapanthus Tango was published internationally in seven languages and then in the United States as The Great Inland Sea. He received the Australian Literature Fund Fellowship to the Keesing Studio in Paris in 2002 and returns to the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris each year. The film rights to The Great Inland Sea have been optioned by Serena Films in France. His second novel, Stray Dog Winter has been released in Australia and the U.S. and was named “Book of the Year” in The Advocate, “Australian Novel of the Year” in the Australian Literary Review, received the commendation of the Fellowship of Australian Writers National Literary Award, was a finalist for the LAMBDA Literary Award, won the 2009 Audiofile Award, and is receiving the American Library Association, Stonewall Barbara Gittings Literary Award for 2010. His short stories and articles have appeared in The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Weekly Times, The Advocate, Wet Ink, The Southern California Reviw, The Elegant Variation, Best Australian Short Stories 2010 and The Harvard Review. He is currently collaborating on the screenplay of The Great Inland Sea and film rights to Stray Dog Winter have been optioned in Australia. See www.straydogwinter.com.
Braden Karl Frederiksen has been experimenting publicly with the form and function of his writing for a few short years. His interest in writing began as a mature-aged student of philosophy at Macquarie University in Sydney, and has been motivated by a desire to overcome his social phobias. Brad has received a huge amount of constructive support for his writing from many well respected authors. He has found friends and lost friends, and he ‘believes’ that if you have not already, you should. Brad can be found, and lost, at Maekitso’s Café.
Alice Gage is the founding editor of Sydney-based curiosity journal Ampersand Magazine. She is a co-director of the live publishing collective I Can Draw You A Picture, and she is helping to build a Librarium (part library, part aquarium) at Redfern ARI, Bill & George. She is currently awaiting a callback from Deal Or No Deal. Alice loves magazines, swanky tucker and the sweet smell of spring.
Published in editions of BLOCK, The Delinquent, Eve’s Harvest and by REM Magazine, Andrew Galan co-founded Canberra poetry slam BAD!SLAM!NO!BISCUIT! and has performed as part of the Corinbank, Canberra Fringe and This is Not Art festivals. He co-hosted the poetry slam and midnight poetry feast at the Australian National Folk Festival in 2010 and 2011, and regularly growls poetry with spoken-word band The Tragic Troubadours. Andrew has words forthcoming with Streetcake, The Delinquent and MAYDAY magazines. Read his blog Huitzilihuitl’s Reign of Death.
Irma Gold is an award-winning writer of short fiction and her debut collection, Two Steps Forward, which was published by Affirm Press in September 2011. She is also the author of two children’s books, editor of a number of anthologies, and is working on her first novel for which she was awarded a place on Varuna Writers’ Centre’s LongLines Program. She blogs for Overland literary journal.
Andrea Goldsmith originally trained as a speech pathologist and was a pioneer in the development of communication aids for people unable to speak. Her first novel, Gracious Living, was published in 1989. This was followed by Modern Interiors, then Facing the Music, Under the Knife and The Prosperous Thief, which was shortlisted for the 2003 Miles Franklin Award. Her literary essays have appeared in Heat, Meanjin, Australian Book Review, Best Australian Essays and numerous anthologies. She has taught creative writing throughout Australia, and has mentored several new writers. She lives in inner Melbourne. The poet, Dorothy Porter, who died in 2008, was Andrea’s partner.
Robert Goodman is an institutionalised public servant who reads voraciously and writes fiction as it often makes more sense than government. Robert has been a judge in the fiction category of the Ned Kelly Awards since 2008 and is using that experience to springboard into a new career of literary review. But just to prove that it is not the case that “those who can’t critique”, he has made the short list two years running in the Ned Kelly SD Harvey Short Story Award for crime writing. Of his 2011 entry, the judges praised his ability to write a short story in which something actually happens. Robert lives in Bondi with his wife and two young children and is currently in the middle of writing at least three novels, one of which might actually get finished.
Alan Gould has published 20 books, seven fiction titles, twelve poetry titles, and one collection of essays. His literary awards include NSW Premier’s Prize for Poetry 1981 (for Astral Sea), Angus And Robertson Fellowship 1983 and Foundation For Australian Literary Studies Best Book Of The Year, 1985 (for The Man Who Stayed Below), National Book Council Banjo Award for Fiction 1992 (for To The Burning City), TDK Audio Book Of The Year 1998 (for The Tazyrik Year), The Philip Hodgins Memorial Award 1999, Co-winner Courier Mail Book Of The Year 2000, and co-winner ACT Book Of The Year 2000 (for The Schoonermaster’s Dance), The Grace Leven Award 2006 (for The Past Completes Me – Selected Poems 1973-2003), short-listing for The Prime Minister’s Fiction Award 2010 (for The Lakewoman).
Ray Greener is a Sydney based writer and critic. His poetry, fiction and essays have been rejected by numerous literary journals, and he is currently completing a PhD in Creative Writing on the topic, ‘Are PhDs in Creative Writing a waste of time?’ At the moment he is working on a collection of stories, a novel in stories, a discontinuous narrative, a memoir, a young adult novel, a literary novel, a sonnet sequence and a collection of essays.
Glenda Guest’s novel Siddon Rock (Vintage 2009) won the 2010 Commonwealth Writers Prize Best First Book Award, and was long-listed for the Miles Franklin Award, short-listed for the NSW Premier’s Prize Best First Book (the Glenda Adams Prize), and short-listed in the Australian Book Industry Awards’ best debut writer section. As well as fiction, Glenda has written and/or edited non-fiction, magazine and journal feature articles, reviews, and a regular literature column. She has worked as a sub-editor, and a literary editor, and was the deputy editor of a monthly arts magazine. As well as teaching creative writing at Macquarie and Griffith Gold Coast universities, Glenda has organised and taught writing workshops at various levels to vastly different groups, for example teenagers (Blacktown young people’s workshop), and adult writing and literature workshops, including for Adult Education, and one-off annual online tutorials in short story with year 11 English students. Glenda Guest’s website can be found here; she is available for manuscript assessment and writer mentoring.
Molly Guy is writer of short stories and poetry. Has had four books published, a novel, two collections of short stories and a book of poetry. Currently working on a new collection of poetry.
Paul Hetherington has published eight collections of poetry. He won the ACT Book of the Year Award (for Shadow Swimmer) and the ANUTECH Poetry Prize and was awarded a Chief Minister’s ACT Creative Arts Fellowship in 2002. His verse novel Blood and Old Belief was shortlisted for the Western Australian Premier’s Book Awards and the Colin Roderick Award. He edited and introduced the final three volumes of the National Library of Australia’s four-volume edition of the diaries of the artist Donald Friend (volume four of which was shortlisted for the Manning Clark House National Cultural Awards). He is one of the founding editors of the online journal Axon: Creative Explorations (2011–). He teaches and researches at the University of Canberra.
Andy Jackson has been recently published in journals such as Blue Dog, Heat and Going Down Swinging, awarded grants from Arts Victoria and the Australia Council, and won the 2008 Rosemary Dobson Prize for an unpublished poem. His collection, Among the Regulars, was published in 2010 by papertiger media. The book is available at Collected Works, Readings Carlton, Red Wheelbarrow (in East Brunswick), Brunswick Bound, on-line through http://www.papertigermedia.com/ and yes of course any ‘good’ bookshop can order it in.
Mark William Jackson is a Sydney-based poet whose work has appeared in various print and online journals including Miscellaneous Voices, Blue Crow, The Diamond & the Thief and SpeedPoets. For more info, prose and poetry–> visit his blog.
Colin James has a chapbook out from Thunderclap Press. He works in Energy Conservation and is a great admirer of the Scottish landscape painter, John Mackenzie….
Tiggy Johnson is a Brisbane writer whose stories and poems have appeared in various literary magazines and on Melbourne trains. She was awarded 2nd prize in the Herald-Sun Short Story Competition 2004. Her short story collection Svetlana or otherwise was published in 2008 and her poetry collection First taste in 2010. For more, go to www.tiggyjohnson.com
Toni Jordan’s debut novel, the international best-seller Addition, was published in 2008 and shortlisted for both the Barbara Jefferis award and the ABIA best general fiction book, longlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award and won best debut fiction in the 2008 Indie awards.Addition was published in 16 countries. Her second novel, Fall Girl, was published in November 2010 in Australia and will be published next year in the UK, Germany, France and Taiwan. Toni teaches Novel at RMIT University and writes a weekly column in the Age. She has also written for the Sydney Morning Herald, the Herald Sun and the Monthly. She is published Text.
Leah Kaminsky is a writer and a practicing family physician. She is the recipient of many awards, grants and fellowships, including the Eleanor Dark Flagship Fellowship for Fiction (2007), a Creative Fellowship at the State Library of Victoria (2010), Rosebank Fellowship, Grace Marion Trust Fellowship at Glenfern and Bayside writer-in-residence(2010/11). She is editor of an anthology of prominent physician-writers, The Pen and the Stethoscope (Scribe Publishing, 2010). Her collection of poetry, Stitching Things Together, is published by Interactive Press (2010). She is completing an MFA in Fiction Writing at Vermont College of Fine Arts, USA.
Emily Kiddell is a Melbourne-based writer and bookseller. She is currently working on her first novel.
Robert Knapman works with words and images. Equal parts writer/poet and photographer, he often combines the two in his visual poetry. Robert was born and raised in Sydney surrounded by art, music and theatre and after studying commercial art spent many years in Adelaide where he worked in the social services and was a performing artist. After living in Germany teaching English, and adventuring in many of the world’s corners he is again back in Sydney working in the fields of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender health and safety. He has been involved in several Sydney exhibitions and performances and has had been published online and in several publications. His work can be seen at www.redbubble.com/people/arjaykay.
Lesley Lebkowicz is an award-winning Canberra writer of prose and poetry. Her most recent book The Way Things Really Are (Buddhanet, 2006) was a collaborative translation of the earliest Buddhist verse cycle. She has recently completed a verse narrative, The Petrov Poems, and is now working on an essay about her ordination as a Buddhist nun.
Nathaniel Lindsay is a filmmaker and screenwriter. He plans to retire to the Azores.
Kent MacCarter is a writer and resident in Melbourne, where he lives with his wife, two cats and one child. His poetry and a smattering of non-fiction has appeared in anthologies, journals and newspapers internationally. He is currently involved on the board of SPUNC: The Small Press Network and is also an active member in Melbourne PEN.
Wayne Macauley is a Melbourne writer whose short fiction has been widely published, in Meanjin, Overland, Westerly, Griffith Review, Island and other magazines. His debut novel, Blueprints for a Barbed-Wire Canoe, was published in 2004 to wide acclaim. His second novel, Caravan Story, was a 2007 Readings Book of the Year. Wayne’s latest book is the short fiction collection, Other Stories.
Sharanya Manivannan was born in India in 1985. She is the author of a book of poems, Witchcraft (2008). Her fiction, poetry and essays have appeared in Drunken Boat, The Nervous Breakdown, Superstition Review, Killing The Buddha, Pratilipi, Dark Sky Magazine and elsewhere. Sharanya can be found online at www.sharanyamanivannan.com.
Kuzhali Manickavel’s collection Insects Are Just like You and Me except Some of Them Have Wings is available from Blaft Publications and can be found at Powell’s Books, Small Press Distribution and Amazon.com. Her work can also be found in Best American Fantasy 3, Subtropics, AGNI Online, anderbo, DIAGRAM and elsewhere. She lives in a small temple town on the coast of South India. For more of her work check out her blog.
Kirk Marshall holds a Bachelor of Creative Industries (Creative Writing), with Distinction from the Queensland University of Technology, a first-class Honours degree in Professional Writing from Deakin University, and he is currently enrolled in a Post-graduate Diploma of Education at RMIT. He is the author of the short-story collection, Carnivalesque, And: Other Stories (Black Rider Press; 2010), and A Solution to Economic Depression in Little Tokyo, 1953, a 2007 Aurealis Award-nominated full-colour illustrated graphic novelette. From 2009 onwards, he is also the editor of Red Leaves, Australia’s (and the world’s!) first English-language/Japanese bi-lingual literary journal.
Lily Mae Martin was born and grew up in Melbourne, Victoria and developed artistic tendencies from a young age. In 2003 she was elected to join the National Gallery of Victoria’s Young Ambassador Program after hosting her first exhibition. She studied at the Victorian College of the Arts where she obtained a BFA in drawing in 2008. On completion of her degree she was awarded the Lionel Gell travelling scholarship and in 2009 moved to Berlin, and subsequently the UK where she currently resides. To date she has exhibited in Australia, Germany, Britain and the Unites States. You can find more of her work at Lily Mae Martin.
Luke May writes short stories in-between selling other people’s books and is writing a thesis on Australian and New Zealand fiction. He has a penchant for not winning anything and has appeared in Torpedo and Story To. When not on the frontier he lives in Melbourne.
Angela Meyer is a Melbourne-based writer and reviewer, and the literary blogger for Crikey. She is a doctoral candidate in the Writing and Society Research Group at the University of Western Sydney, and a former acting editor of Bookseller+Publisher magazine. Her reviews, stories and articles have appeared in many publications, including the Sydney Morning Herald, Bookslut,AntiTHESIS, Mascara Literary Review, Cordite Poetry Review, Wet Ink, Southerly, Hecate, The Lifted Brow and Torpedo Greatest Hits.
Sonja Meyer is a freelance graphic designer with a passion for all things creative. One of her main interests is to express confidence in graphic design as a powerful catalyst for change through sustainable and ethical design practices. Sonja finds inspiration in every nook and cranny, and is currently in the process of extending her portfolio. She would be happy to hear from anyone in need of graphic design work/a shoulder to cry on. Her website is IdentityCrisis.
Simonne Michelle-Wells is a theatre critic and has had short fiction published in various publications. She was the recipient of the 2009 Ada Cambridge Prize for biographical short story writing and was awarded a residency at Varuna in 2008 for her first novel. Simonne has been writing a blog on writing called Into the Quiet since 2007 and recently worked as a speech writer for the Lord Mayor of Melbourne (which nearly killed her).
Tara Mokhtari has completed a PhD in Creative Writing/Poetry at RMIT University, teaches at Victoria University and gives workshops for new and emerging poets. Her poems have appeared in Heat 15 – Luminous Gerberas, Four W, several Visible Ink anthologies, and The New City Project. She is a regular blogger on for Overland. Tara has edited two books translated from Farsi to English for international publication and Tara worked as head of publicity for a blues and roots record label, and occasionally toured independent bands. She wrote and directed a short music documentary that aired on community television and in a few little festivals in 2004, entitled Who Is Baron Samadhi. Tara likes scotch and takes naps most days. For more of Tara’s poetry–> go to her blog.
Joran C.A. Monteiro is Dutch. He lives in Melbourne. He writes poetry and fiction. Check out his Blogà Blues Fiction
Derek Motion works at the Booranga Writers Centre and Charles Sturt University. He writes poems, and also anything else that occurs. He has new work forthcoming in the next issues of Cordite and Overland–> Go to his blog Typing Space for more thought and poetry.
Alison Murray was born in 1973 in Kalgoorlie, and has lived in Perth, Brisbane, Townsville, New Guinea, Edinburgh. She has worked as barmaid, market researcher, archaeologist, anthropologist, teacher and translator. She currently lives in the south of France.
Ruby J Murray is a writer, researcher, and co-founder of www.the-democracy-project.org. She placed second in the Grade Six division of the Alphington Primary School Swimming Carnival in 1996. Her first novel, Dungeons and Dragons: Hero Quest was released to parental acclaim the following year. Ruby’s work has been rejected by many well-known literary journals, including Granta and The Encyclopedia Britannica On-Line. Ruby’s blog can be found here: http://rubyjoymurray.wordpress.com/
Pierz Newton-John is a web developer and writer living in Melbourne. Among other places, Pierz’s short fiction has been published in the Sleepers Almanac, Meanjin, Kill Your Darlings, Overland, New Australian Stories and Wet Ink. You can find his blog at Cri de Coeur.
Agnieszka Niemira is a poet, haijin, writer, and educator. Her collections of poetry, waves whisper the shoreline to life (2010) and making the invisible transparent (2008) were released through Post Pressed. Her poems have also been published in The Australian, Southerly, Blue Giraffe, Social Alternatives, poetry anthology Up From Below (Redress Press), Paper Wasp, Stylus, the Mozzie, Haiku Dreaming Australia, Scope, SpeedPoets, Empowerment4Women, Radar, Słowo Powszechne, and on BRISSC (Brisbane Rape & Incest Survivors Support Centre) website as well as on Stachuriada. She has performed her poetry at various events in Poland and Austraccccalia and read her work on radio. She won two awards, First Prize and Distinction, during a prestigious Polish Poetry Competition, Łódź’s Spring of Poets, 1985, and an Encouragement Award from the Fellowship of Australian Writers (Queensland) in April 1989. In 2008, she was one of the finalists of the Paper Wasp Jack Stamm Haiku Competition and a runner-up in the Brisbane Heat of Poetry Slam.
Ryan O’Neill was born in Scotland in 1975, and has lived and worked in Rwanda, China and Lithuania. His stories have appeared in various literary magazines and journals. He lives in Newcastle, NSW with his wife and two children.
Paddy O’Reilly’s work includes a short story collection, The End of the World, a novel, The Factory, and a novella, ‘Deep Water.’ Her stories have won a number of national and international story awards and been widely published, broadcast and anthologised. Her next novel will be published in the UK and Australia early in 2012.
Geoff Page is a Canberra-based poet who has published eighteen collections of poetry as well as two novels, four verse novels and several other works including anthologies, translations and a biography of the jazz musician, Bernie McGann. Selections from his poetry have been translated into six languages. He has also read his work and talked on Australian poetry throughout Europe as well as in India, Singapore, China, Korea, the United States and New Zealand. He has been reviewing Australian poetry since the late 1960s, mainly in The Canberra Times and on the ABC. His most recent works are: Agnostic Skies (Five Islands Press 2006); Lawrie & Shirley:The Final Cadenza (Pandanus Books 2007); Seriatim (Salt 2007); 60 Classic Australian Poems (UNSW Press 2009) as well as the CD Coffee with Miles (River Road Press 2009).
Helena Pastor has had a number of short stories and essays published in various Australian journals including Griffith REVIEW, Westerly, Island and Hecate. ‘What’s Updog?’ is an excerpt from ‘Iron Men: Alchemy at Work, a memoir which explores the challenge of disaffected youth from a mother’s perspective. Helena has been awarded an Australian Society of Authors Mentorship and four fellowships at Varuna Writers’ House (most recently a 2010 HarperCollins Varuna Award) to develop this manuscript.
Liesl Pfeffer is a photo-media artist from Melbourne, Australia. Originally from Brisbane, she graduated from the Queensland College of Art with a Bachelor of Photography in early 2006. Liesl makes collages from toy camera photographs, vintage fabric and found drawings. She also shoots street photography with Polaroid, Holga and Canon Demi cameras. Liesl was awarded the Queensland Centre for Photography Graduate Prize in 2005 and was a finalist in the Churchie Emerging Artist Award in 2006. She has exhibited in group shows in Brisbane and Melbourne since 2005. Her second solo show, Souvenir, will be at NO No Gallery, Melbourne, in November 2010.
Louise Pine currently works as an editor and researcher in the area of industrial relations. She blogs for Overland literary journal, and she writes and edits on an ongoing voluntary basis for the Grameen Foundation. She worked as an intern with Sleepers Publishing and has had short fiction published with Cutting Teeth (UK), Viewpoint and Farrago, and non-fiction published with Neo-Industrial Opera and Beat Magazine.
Lyn Reeves is a poet and indie publisher. She is an associate editor for the amazing literary journal, Famous Reporter, and the managing editor of Pardalote Press which publishes beautiful books of poetry. Last year her collection Designs on the Body won the IP Picks Best Poetry for 2010. It is published by Interactive Press.
Francesca Rendle-Short grew up in Queensland, the fifth of six children. She has worked variously as a radio producer, teacher, editor, freelance writer and arts journalist. She is a novelist, author of the novel/memoir Bite Your Tongue (Spinifex Press), Imago (Spinifex Press), and Big Sister (Redress Novellas). She is also co-author with scriptwriter Felicity Packard of the short play entitled Us. Her short fictions, photo-essays, exhibition text, and poetry for the page and for the wall, have been published in literary journals and magazines, online and in exhibitions. Francesca has a Doctor of Creative Arts from the University of Wollongong and is the Program Director of Creative Writing RMIT University. She lives in Melbourne.
Chloe Rose is 25. She aspires to be a photographic artist when she grows up. Intimate images come naturally to her, she wants to draw you into worlds through her lens, letting you lose yourself, if only for a moment.
Josephine Rowe’s poetry and short fiction have been widely published and broadcast. Her collection of short fiction, How a Moth Becomes a Boat, was published earlier this year by Hunter Publishers, and she is currently writing a novel with assistance from the Australian Society of Authors and the Australia Council. She is the poetry editor for Harvest.
Lee Sandwith is a Melbourne based actress, film maker and photographer with diverse experience in portraiture, event and fine art photography. She has exhibited her photographs widely and has been published in a number of publications including Platform Magazine and Dot Dot Dash Magazine. She also has a number professional film, television and theatre performance credits to her name and has directed music videos, theatre and film productions. Having the professional experience and practice of working behind and in front of the camera, Lee has a unique talent of being able to synthesize and execute all features of the photographic process to create truly impressive images. For more Lee Sandwith go to her website and flicker site.
Nicola Scholes is the author of Dear Rose, a poetry chapbook published by Small Change Press in 2009 (www.smallchangepress.com.au). Nicola’s poems have appeared in the journals The Broadkill Review (USA), Cordite, Hecate, Page Seventeen, Social Alternatives, Stylus, and the books Hibiscus and Ti-Tree: Women in Queensland, and Poems in Perspex: Max Harris Poetry Award 2007. Nicola regularly performs her poems at the Brisbane spoken word event SpeedPoets, and at Queensland Poetry Festival in 2008 and 2009.
Ronnie Scott’s writing has appeared in HEAT, Torpedo, Wet Ink, Bookslut, The Rumpus, The Big Issue, and other magazines. He’s the program advisor for the National Young Writers’ Festival, and he’s taught writing, editing, and publishing at a couple of Australian universities.
JL Shenstone is a writer of short fiction and poetry. She has been published in Banquet 2011: An anthology of new writing and art by Australian Queer Women. When not writing, Jas can usually be found basking in the whiskey spring. Here website is at www.jlshenstone.wordpress.com
John Smith was born in Sydney but has lived on the north coast of NSW for thirty-five years. He has undergraduate and postgraduate degrees from the University of Sydney. Smith has held more than thirty solo exhibitions and is primarily represented by Watters Gallery, in Sydney. He has work in many public and private collections, including the National Gallery of Australia, Queensland Art Gallery, Artbank and many regional collections. The tension in his work oscillates between making and effacing, simultaneously. This is the irony of ‘quietly bursting balloons’, ‘scribbling rivalry’, ‘as easy as pulling teeth’, ‘the look of something to say’, ‘and ‘smear campaign’, being the various titles he uses. In recent years he has led a cultural heritage retrieval project interfaced with creative arts, Fisherman’s Village. This project has resulted in a number of conference papers, journal publications and a book chapter. John Smith is the Senior Lecturer in Painting and is the Course Coordinator and Honours Coordinator in Visual Arts at Southern Cross University.
Alicia Sometimes is a poet, writer, broadcaster and musician. She has been published in Australia and overseas in such publications as Best Australian Poems 2006 and 2009, Cordite, Verandah, Westerly, Heat, Southerly, Poetrix, Short Fuse, Hecate, papertiger, Blue Dog, Overland, Meanjin etc. She has performed spoken word over 400 times as a feature or guest at many venues, festivals and events in Australia, Berlin, London and New Zealand, including the Melbourne International Arts Festival, Melbourne Writers’ Festival, Auckland Writers and Readers Festival, Queensland Poetry Festival, Adelaide Fringe Festival, Melbourne Fringe Festival, Mildura Arts Festival, Tasmanian Poetry Festival, Sydney Writers’ Festival, The Big Day Out and the Newcastle Writers’ Festival also appearing on the SBS TV program Nomad and ABC TV shows Recovery and Sunday Arts. Her work has appeared on many spoken word CDs, including Going Down Swinging, You Talkin To Me?, Short Fuse (US) and Synaptic Graffiti. She has two collections of poetry, kissing the curve and Soundtrack. She is currently a presenter on 3RRR with a weekly show Aural Text dedicated to playing spoken word and in 2002 was a monthly guest on JJJ’s Artery showcasing the best in spoken word from around Australia. In 2004 she was co-organiser of the first national poetry radio slam on Radio National. She was co-editor of the literary journal Going Down Swinging for seven years.
Warwick Sprawson’s stories have appeared in magazines including Southerly, Wet Ink and Etchings. He also writes non-fiction, which pays better, particularly hiking stories. He was runner-up in the 2009 Rolf Boldrewood Awards, and, more recently, was awarded £10 for coming second in a beauty competition.
Sarah St Vincent Welch lives in Canberra and facilitates creative writing and creative reading, as well as doing some of her own. She co-edited The Pearly Griffin – the story of the old Griffin Centre with Lizz Murphy, and two short story anthologies – The Circulatory System and Time Pieces with Craig Cormick. She also co-edited FIRST: Surrender with Francesca Rendle-Short in 2007 (a student anthology at the University of Canberra) and is editor of FIRST in 2012 (working with a student committee). Her short fiction (or long poetry – whichever way the coin lands), has been anthologised, and also published in independent magazines. She blogs at http://thisfiveminutes.com
Shane Strange is a writer living in Canberra, Australia. His short fiction has appeared in various publications, including Griffith Review, Heat, Verandah and Overland, as well as being collected in Best Australian Stories 2006 and 2007.
Louise Swinn is the editorial director of independent publisher, Sleepers, publishers of The Sleepers Almanac. She is also a reviewer and fiction writer, whose work has appeared in The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald, Meanjin, Overland, Best Australian Stories and The Australian. She tweets at @Louise_Swinn
Maria Takolander’s first collection of poems, Ghostly Subjects (Salt 2009), was shortlisted for a Queensland Premier’s Literary Award in 2010. Her poetry has been widely published, appearing in The Best Australian Poems (Black Inc) and/or The Best Australian Poetry (UQP) every year since 2005. She was also winner of the inaugural Australian Book Review Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Competition in 2010. She is a Senior Lecturer in Literary Studies and Creative Writing at Deakin University in Geelong.
Michael Talbot lives and works in Toronto, Ontario. A news writer and editor by profession, he’s been an avid street photographer for years, wandering the streets of Toronto with a variety of cameras, always on the lookout for an intriguing character or candid street scene. He posts his work on www.urbanghost.com.
Julie Thorndyke is a graduate of the Master of Creative Writing programme at the University of Sydney. She has published tanka in many journals, both locally and overseas. A winner in the Tanka Splendor competition in 2006, 2007 2008 and 2009, she was also awarded an honourable mention in 6th International Tanka Festival Competition 2009 (Japan). Her first collection of tanka, rick rack, was published by Ginninderra Press in 2008. Her second collection, Carving Granite, is due out in 2011.
Vicki Thornton is an emerging poet and lives in the Dandenong Ranges. Her poetry has appeared in a variety of publications including Divan, Page Seventeen, Tamba, Poetrix, Polestar and a poem has been accepted for the APC Dear Dad anthology. She is the Acting Editor of Page Seventeen and is now dipping her toe into performance poetry.
Lara S. Williams is a British/Australian writer whose work has been published in Cordite, Antipodes, Islet, Blue Crow, page seventeen, Island, Mascara, fourW and the Sun Herald Extras Section. She is editor of the travel journal The Great Affairs and is currently undertaking her creative writing masters at the University of Edinburgh.
Ernest Williamson III has published poetry and visual art in over 290 national and international online and print journals. He is a Christian,a self-taught pianist, singer, and painter. His poetry has been nominated three times for the Best of the Net anthology (http://www.sundresspublications.com/). The poems which were nominated for the Best of the Net anthology are as follows: ‘The Jazz of Old Wine’, ‘The Symbol of Abiotic Needs’, & ‘The Misfortune of Shallow Sight’. He holds the B.A. and the M.A. in English/Creative Writing/Literature from the University of Memphis. Ernest,an English Professor, at Essex County College, has taught English at New Jersey City University and tutored students in English and Mathematics at Seton Hall University. Professor Williamson, who is (ABD), is also finishing up his Ph.D. at Seton Hall University in the field of Higher Education Leadership. He is also a member of The International High IQ Society http://www.highiqsociety.org/my-account/pdf_certificate.php based in New York City and he is a Chess Master’ with an internet rating in the range of 2200+. Currently he is rated 2212.
Chris Womersley is a Melbourne-based writer of fiction, reviews and essays. His work has appeared in Granta, Best Australian Stories 2006 and 2010, The Griffith Review, The Monthly and The Age. In 2007 one of his short stories won the Josephine Ulrick Prize for Literature. He won the 2008 Ned Kelly Award for Best First Fiction for his novel The Low Road. His second novel Bereft was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award, the Australian Society of Literature Gold Medal and won the Indie Award for Best Fiction. www.chriswomersley.com
Bel Woods is a fiction writer with a penchant for short stories. Her work has appeared in [untitled] magazine #2 and was Commended in the Alan Marshall Short Story Award. She is currently studying at La Trobe University.
Sam van Zweden (23) lives in Melbourne and studies Creative Writing at RMIT. She is a poet, short-story writer, reviewer and blogger (http://www.littlegirlwithabigpen.wordpress.com). Her work has appeared in Ricochet Magazine (http://ricochetmag.wordpress.com/ezine/), Page Seventeen, Voiceworks and Catalyst, and she was a 2010 Australian Poetry Slam state finalist.
Verity La 
You must be logged in to post a comment.