Anita Heiss
Professor Anita Heiss – bio
Anita is a proud member of the Wiradjuri nation of central New South Wales, and is one of Australia’s most prolific and well-known authors, publishing across genres, including non-fiction, historical fiction, commercial fiction and children’s novels.
Her adult fiction includes Not Meeting Mr Right, Avoiding Mr Right, Manhattan Dreaming, Paris Dreaming and Tiddas. Her most recent books include Barbed Wire and Cherry Blossoms which was longlisted for the Dublin International Literary Prize and was named the University of Canberra’s 2020 Book of the Year.
The anthology Growing Up Aboriginal in Australia which Anita edited, was named the Small Publisher Adult Book of the Year at the 2019 Australian Book Industry Awards
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Aileen Moreton-Robinson
Aileen Moreton-Robinson is professor of Indigenous studies at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia, and is director of the National Indigenous Research and Knowledges Network. She is author of Talkin’ Up to the White Woman: Indigenous Women and Feminism and editor of several books, including Sovereign Subjects: Indigenous Sovereignty Matters.
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Jane Harrison
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Her first play Stolen played across Australia and internationally for seven years. Rainbow’s End was produced in 2005, 2009, 2011 and 2019 and won the 2012 Drover Award. Her novel Becoming Kirrali Lewis won the 2014 Black & Write! Prize, and was shortlisted for the Prime Minster’s Literary Awards and the Victorian Premier’s Awards.
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Evelyn Araluen
Evelyn Araluen is a poet and teacher researching Indigenous literatures at the University of Sydney, where she is completing her PhD. She coordinates Black Rhymes Aboriginal Poetry Nights in Redfern and is a founding member of Students Support Aboriginal Communities, a grassroots organisation based in Sydney. Born and raised in Dharug country, she is a descendant of the Bundjalung nation.
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Deborah Rodriguez
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Joëlle Gergis
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Nardi Simpson
Nardi Simpson is a Yuwaalaraay writer, musician, composer and educator from North West NSW freshwater plains. A founding member of Indigenous folk duo Stiff Gins, Nardi has been performing nationally and internationally for 20 years. Her debut novel, Song of the Crocodile was a 2018 winner of a black&write! writing fellowship.
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Melanie Saward
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Antony Loewenstein
Antony Loewenstein is an independent journalist, best-selling author, filmmaker and co-founder of Declassified Australia. He's written for The Guardian, The New York Times, The New York Review of Books and many others. His books include The Palestine Laboratory, Pills, Powder and Smoke, Disaster Capitalism and My Israel Question. His documentary films include Disaster Capitalism and the Al Jazeera English films West Africa's Opioid Crisis and Under the Cover of Covid. He was based in East Jerusalem 2016-2020.
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Molly Schmidt
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Shirley Barrett
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Ion L. Idriess
Ion Llewellyn Idriess, who won the Order of the British Empire was a prolific and influential Australian author.He wrote over 50 books between 1927 to 1969. Idriess was able to convey an image of Australia that few of its nationals could recognise but that all of them could love and be proud of. From the pearling ships off the port of Broome, to the mighty Inland of Australia where all of Western Europe could fit several times over, Idriess experienced all of these places and attempted to convey to the reader the wonder and love he felt for his wild country.
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Tara June Winch
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Jack Charles
Jack Charles, also known as Uncle Jack Charles, was an Aboriginal Australian stage and screen actor, musician, potter, and elder. He was involved in establishing the first Indigenous theatre in Australia, co-founding, with Bob Maza, Nindethana Theatre in 1971.
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Duane Hamacher
Duane Hamacher is Associate Professor of Cultural Astronomy in the School of Physics at the University of Melbourne. He earned graduate degrees in astrophysics and the social sciences and has appeared on TEDx, The Story of God with Morgan Freeman, and many other high profile local and international programs. He serves as an expert consultant for UNESCO and works for Indigenous elders in the Torres Strait and around the world to document traditional star knowledge for educational programs and public understanding.
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Tony Birch
Tony Birch is the author of Ghost River, which won the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Indigenous Writing and Blood, which was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award. He is also the author of Shadowboxing and three short story collections, Father’s Day, The Promise and Common People. In 2017 he was awarded the Patrick White Literary Award. Tony is a frequent contributor to ABC local and national radio and a regular guest at writers’ festivals. He lives in Melbourne and is a Senior Research Fellow at Victoria University.
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Larissa Behrendt
Larissa is the author of three novels: Home, which won the 2002 David Unaipon Award and the regional Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book; Legacy, which won the 2010 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Indigenous Writing; and After Story. She has published numerous books on Indigenous legal issues; her most recent non-fiction book is Finding Eliza: Power and Colonial Storytelling. She was awarded the 2009 NAIDOC Person of the Year award and 2011 NSW Australian of the Year. Larissa wrote and directed the feature films, After the Apology and Innocence Betrayed and has written and produced several short films. In 2018 she won the Australian Directors’ Guild Award for Best Direction in a Documentary Feature and in 2020 the AACTA f
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Cameron Stewart
Cameron Stewart grew up in Australia on farm near Mullumbimby, by way of Alice Springs, Canberra and Cairns. After living and working in Sydney for many years, Cameron now resides in Seoul, South Korea. Diversity of place informs much of his writing as does an interest in flawed characters trying to do their best. Cameron holds an MA (Creative Writing) from the University of Technology, Sydney and a BA (Performing Arts) from the University of Western Sydney (Theatre Nepean). Cameron is an award winning, short fiction writer and has been published in Australia, the UK and the USA. Why Do Horses Run? is Cameron's debut novel. He is currently working on his second novel, Cosmonaut.
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Sara M. Saleh
Sara M Saleh is an award winning writer and poet of Palestinian, Egyptian, and Lebanese heritage, who has shared her work on stages from Brooklyn to Bangalore. Her work has been published in English and Arabic across dozens of literary platforms including Haymarket anthologies and the Guardian, and explores the experiences of Arab-Muslim women navigating faith, family, and cultural expectations amid dispossession and displacement.
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Sara’s debut novel Songs For The Dead And The Living (Affirm Press, 2023) was shortlisted for the US Khairallah Prize for Literature and the Multicultural NSW Award at the NSW Premier's Literary Award, and co-won the Australian Society of Author’s Barbara Jefferis Award 2024.
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Tim Winton
Tim Winton was born in Perth, Western Australia, but moved at a young age to the small country town of Albany.
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While a student at Curtin University of Technology, Winton wrote his first novel, An Open Swimmer. It went on to win The Australian/Vogel Literary Award in 1981, and launched his writing career. In fact, he wrote "the best part of three books while at university". His second book, Shallows, won the Miles Franklin Award in 1984. It wasn't until Cloudstreet was published in 1991, however, that his career and economic future were cemented.
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Michelle de Kretser
Michelle de Kretser is an Australian novelist who was born in Sri Lanka but moved to Australia when she was 14.
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She was educated in Melbourne and Paris, and published her first novel, 'The Rose Grower' in 1999. Her second novel, published in 2003, 'The Hamilton Case' was winner of the Tasmania Pacific Prize, the Encore Award (UK) and the Commonwealth Writers Prize (Southeast Asia and Pacific). 'The Lost Dog' was published in 2007. It was one of 13 books on the long list for the 2008 Man Booker Prize for Fiction. From 1989 to 1992 she was a founding editor of the Australian Women's Book Review. -
Kate Grenville
Kate Grenville is one of Australia's best-known authors. She's published eight books of fiction and four books about the writing process. Her best-known works are the international best-seller The Secret River, The Idea of Perfection, The Lieutenant and Lilian's Story (details about all Kate Grenville's books are elsewhere on this site). Her novels have won many awards both in Australia and the UK, several have been made into major feature films, and all have been translated into European and Asian languages.
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Helen Garner
Helen Garner was born in Geelong in 1942. She has published many works of fiction including Monkey Grip, Cosmo Cosmolino and The Children's Bach. Her fiction has won numerous awards. She is also one of Australia's most respected non-fiction writers, and received a Walkley Award for journalism in 1993.
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Her most recent books are The First Stone, True Stories, My Hard Heart, The Feel of Stone and Joe Cinque's Consolation. In 2006 she won the Melbourne Prize for Literature. She lives in Melbourne.
Praise for Helen Garner's work
'Helen Garner is an extraordinarily good writer. There is not a paragraph, let alone a page, where she does not compel your attention.'
Bulletin
'She is outstanding in the accuracy of her observations, the intensity of passio -
Melissa Lucashenko
Melissa Lucashenko is an Australian writer of European and Goorie heritage. She received an honours degree in public policy from Griffith University in 1990. In 1997, she published her first novel Steam Pigs. It won the Dobbie Literary Award for Australian women’s fiction and was shortlisted for both the New South Wales Premier’s Literary Award and the regional Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. Steam Pigs was followed by the Aurora Prize–winning Killing Darcy, a novel for teenagers, and Hard Yards, which was shortlisted for the 2001 Courier-Mail Book of the Year and the New South Wales Premier’s Literary Award. Too Flash, a teenage novel about class and friendship, was released in 2002. Her latest novel is Mullumbimby published by UQP. Melissa l
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Jane Harrison
Jane Harrison is descended from the Muruwari people and is an award-winning playwright, author and Festival director. Jane directed the Blak & Bright First Nations Literary Festival in 2016 and 2019.
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Her first play Stolen played across Australia and internationally for seven years. Rainbow’s End was produced in 2005, 2009, 2011 and 2019 and won the 2012 Drover Award. Her novel Becoming Kirrali Lewis won the 2014 Black & Write! Prize, and was shortlisted for the Prime Minster’s Literary Awards and the Victorian Premier’s Awards.
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Jane Caro
Jane Caro wears many hats; including author, lecturer, mentor, social commentator, columnist, workshop facilitator, speaker, broadcaster and award-winning advertising writer. Jane runs her own communications consultancy and lectures in Advertising Creative at The School of Communication Arts at UWS. She has published three books: The Stupid Country: How Australia is dismantling public education co-authored with Chris Bonnor (2007), The F Word. How we learned to swear by feminism co-authored with Catherine Fox (2008), and Just a Girl (UQP, 2011). She has also appeared on Channel 7’s Sunrise, ABC’s Q&A and ABC’s The Gruen Transfer.
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Inga Simpson
Inga is the award-winning author of THE THINNING, WILLOWMAN, THE LAST WOMAN IN THE WORLD, THE BOOK OF AUSTRALIAN TREES, UNDERSTORY: a life with trees, WHERE THE TREES WERE, NEST and MR WIGG.
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A novelist and nature writer, her work explores our relationship with the natural world.
Inga grew up in central west NSW, and has lived in Canberra, Brisbane and the Sunshine Coast. She is now based on the far south coast of NSW.
WILLOWMAN was shortlisted for the Bookpeople adult fiction Book of the Year 2023.
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Hannah Kent
Hannah Kent's first novel, the international bestseller, Burial Rites (2013), was translated into 30 languages and was shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction and the Guardian First Book Award. It won the ABIA Literary Fiction Book of the Year, the Indie Awards Debut Fiction Book of the Year and the Victorian Premier's People's Choice Award, and was shortlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.
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Hannah's second novel, The Good People was published in 2016 (ANZ) and 2017 (Feb, UK; Sept, North America). It was shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, the Indie Book Award for Fiction and the ABIA Literary Fiction Book of the Year. It has been translated into 10 languages.
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Robbie Arnott
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Jock Serong
Jock Serong lives and works on the far southwest coast of Victoria. He was a practising lawyer when he wrote Quota and is currently a features writer, and the editor of Great Ocean Quarterly. He is married with four children, who in turn are raising a black dog, a rabbit and an unknown number of guinea pigs. Quota was his first novel.
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Melanie Cheng
I am a writer, mum and general practitioner from Melbourne, Australia. I have been published in print and online. My writing has appeared in The Age, Meanjin, Overland, Griffith REVIEW, Sleepers Almanac, The Bridport Prize Anthology, Lascaux Review, Visible Ink, Peril, The Victorian Writer and Seizure. My short story collection, Australia Day, won the 2016 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Unpublished Manuscript and went on to win the 2018 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Fiction. My latest book is the novel, Room for a Stranger. If Saul Bellow is right and “a writer is a reader moved to emulation” then I am moved by authors like Richard Yates, Alice Munro, Haruki Murakami and Christos Tsiolkas.
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Meredith Appleyard
Meredith Appleyard lives in the Clare Valley wine-growing region of South Australia, two hours north of Adelaide. As a registered nurse and midwife, she has worked in a wide range of country health practice settings, including the Royal Flying Doctor Service. She has done agency nursing in London and volunteer work in Vietnam. After her first manuscript was rejected, she joined a writers' group, attended workshops and successfully completed an Advanced Diploma of Arts in Professional Writing with the Adelaide College of the Arts. And she kept working. When she isn't writing, Meredith is reading, helping organise the annual Clare Writers' Festival, or at home with her husband and her border collie, Daisy. The Country Practice is her first no
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Shankari Chandran
Shankari Chandran uses literary fiction to explore injustice, dispossession and the creation of community.
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Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens is her third novel, published by Ultimo Press in 2022 and short-listed for the Miles Franklin Literary Award 2023. Her first novel, Song of the Sun God, was also re-published by Ultimo Press in 2022.
Before turning to fiction, Shankari worked in the social justice field for a decade in London where she was responsible for projects in over 30 countries ranging from ensuring representation for detainees in Guantanamo Bay to advising UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
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Dervla McTiernan
Number one internationally bestselling author Dervla McTiernan is the critically acclaimed and award-winning author of six novels, including the much-loved Cormac Reilly series and two number 1 bestselling standalone thrillers, The Murder Rule and What Happened to Nina?, both New York Times Best Thrillers of the Year and both currently in development for screen adaptation. Dervla is also the author of four novellas, and her audio novella, The Sisters, was a four-week number one bestseller in the United States. Before turning her hand to writing, Dervla spent twelve years working as a lawyer in her home country of Ireland. Following the global financial crisis, she relocated to Western Australia where she now lives with her husband, two chil
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Sarah Clutton
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Sarah's work saw her named as the national recipient of the Dymocks/Fiona McIntosh Commercial Fiction Scholarship in 2018. Her next book, The Remarkable Truths of Alfie Bains is published by Allen & Unwin and will be on the shelves in 2025. She lives with her family in the beautiful Southern Highlands of New South Wales in the tiny, historic village of Berrima. The region is famous for the International Cri -
Siang Lu
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Thomas Mayo
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Angie Faye Martin
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Madeleine Cleary
Madeleine's debut novel, The Butterfly Women (29 April 2025, Affirm Press), inspired by her family history, was chosen as Dymocks Fiction Book of the Month. Her writing was shortlisted for The Australian Fiction Prize in 2024. She holds a Master of Arts degree from the University of Melbourne and an associated honours degree from RMIT University. Oblivious to her history, Madeleine completed her studies a block from her family’s brothel in Juliet Terrace, which inspired her debut novel. Madeleine served as an Australian diplomat in China. Before joining the public service, Madeleine spent five years working in bookshops, where she met her husband. Madeleine is from Naarm/Melbourne and lives at the foothills of the Dandenong Ranges.
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Doris Pilkington
July 1 birth date is approximate.
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Doris Pilkington is also known as Nugi Garimara and Doris Pilkington Garimara. -
Bruce Pascoe
Bruce Pascoe was born of Bunurong and Tasmanian Aboriginal heritage in the Melbourne suburb of Richmond and graduated from the University of Melbourne with a Bachelor of Education. He is a member of the Wathaurong Aboriginal Co-operative of southern Victoria and has been the director of the Australian Studies Project for the Commonwealth Schools Commission.
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Bruce has had a varied career as a teacher, farmer, fisherman, barman, fencing contractor, lecturer, Aboriginal language researcher, archaeological site worker and editor.
He won the Fellowship of Australian Writers´ Literature Award in 1999 and his novel Fog a Dox (published by Magabala Books in 2012), won the Young Adult category of the 2013 Prime Minister's Literary Awards.
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Ethel Turner
Born in England in 1870, Ethel Turner came to Australia with her mother and sisters when she was 10 years old. She showed a great love of literature while at school and in her late teens launched a literary and social magazine in Sydney with her sister Lilian Turner. Ethel kept diaries for a remarkable 62 years, recording the details of her full and eventful life. In January 1893 she recorded in her diary, "Night started a new story that I shall call Seven Little Australians." Later that year, she finished the book, parcelled it up and sent it off to a publisher in Melbourne. Since then the book has sold over 2 million copies in the English language and has been reprinted over 50 times. It has been translated into at least 11 languages, per
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Shaun Usher
Shaun Usher is a writer, editor, and compulsive collector of remarkable words. He is the author of Letters of Note, an international bestseller that began life as a blog and grew into a celebrated series of books and inspired the live stage show Letters Live, which he has co-produced since 2013. He has published 16 books so far, covering everything from love and grief to music, dogs, and outer space, and in October 2025 will release his 17th, Diaries of Note: 366 Lives, One Day at a Time, a curated journey through a year’s worth of diary entries from history. He lives in Manchester with his wife, Karina, and their three children.
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Carl Merrison
Carl is a Jaru/Kija man from Halls Creek in the Kimberleys in Western Australia. Carl loves spending time out bush with his family; fishing, hunting and swimming in waterholes. He loves AFL- he is a Level 3 coach! Carl was awarded State Finalist of the Australian of the Year Award- Local Hero for Western Australia in 2016 for his work as lifeguard, football coach, Clontarf worker and youth mentor. Carl was the 2020 Black&Write Fellowship recipient for his series of picture books: Backyard Sports. He was a shortlisted author for the Western Australian Writing Fellowship.
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Thomas Mayo
Thomas Mayo is a Kaurareg Aboriginal and Kalkalgal, Erubamle Torres Strait Islander man. He is the Assistant National Secretary of the Maritime Union of Australia. Thomas is a signatory of the Uluru Statement from the Heart and has been a leading advocate since its inception in May 2017. He is the Chairperson of the Northern Territory Indigenous Labor Network and a director on the Australians for Indigenous Constitutional Recognition board. Thomas is the author of six books, including the bestselling The Voice to Parliament Handbook: All The Details You Need with eminent journalist Kerry O’Brien (Hardie Grant, 2023).
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Amy McQuire
Amy McQuire is a Darumbal and South Sea Islander journalist who lives and works in Rockhampton. She has more than ten years experience in Aboriginal journalism and has previously worked at the National Indigenous Times, Tracker Magazine, NITV and New Matilda. She is currently the Indigenous Affairs reporter for Buzzfeed.
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Maria Lewis
Maria Lewis is a AWGIE Award-winning screenwriter, best-selling author, and pop culture etymologist from Australia. She’s the author of the internationally published Supernatural Sisters series of eight books, which includes the Aurealis Award-winning The Witch Who Courted Death, and titles for Marvel (Mockingbird: Strike Out), Assassin's Creed (Daughter Of No One) and forthcoming slasher The Graveyard Shift. As a screenwriter, she has worked across projects for AMC, Netflix, SBS, Ubisoft, ABC, DC Comics and many more. She's the presenter, writer and producer of audio documentaries - The Phantom Never Dies - about the world's first superhero - and Josie and the Podcats - about the 2001 cult film. In 2023, she made her directorial debut with
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Sara El Sayed
Sara El Sayed is an Egyptian-born Master of Fine Arts student living in Brisbane. Her research focus is digital storytelling by migrant Egyptian women. Her work, both fiction and nonfiction, is influenced by her culture, her family and her identity as a migrant.
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Kasey Chambers
Chambers was born in Mount Gambier, South Australia. She has an older brother, Nash Chambers. She grew up on the Nullarbor Plain and the tiny fishing village in Beachport, South Australia. Her family owned the local Fish and Chip shop for a time and were playing and touring with her family band, "The Dead Ringer Band" which included her father Billy Chambers a Golden Guitar Award songwriter and Nash Chambers, now a well known music producer and performer. "The Dead Ringer Band" continued to tour locally and interstate gaining support and popularity along the way.
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Samantha Faulkner
Samantha Faulkner is a Torres Strait Islander and Aboriginal woman, from Badu and Moa Islands in the Torres Strait and the Yadhaigana and Wuthathi peoples of Cape York Peninsula, Queensland. Her poetry and short stories have been published nationally and internationally, and she is the proud author of Life Blong Ali Drummond: A Life in the Torres Strait (Aboriginal Studies Press, July 2007) and editor of Pamle: Torres Strait Islanders in Canberra (2018). She also is a member of the ACT Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Arts Network, MARION (ACT Writers) and the treasurer of First Nations Australia Writers Network and Us Mob Writing Group. In 2023, she was the Torres Strait Islander curator for the Brisbane Writers Festival.
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Santilla Chingaipe
Santilla Chingaipe is an award-winning journalist and filmmaker. She spent nearly a decade working for SBS World News, which saw her report from across Africa and interview some of the continent’s prominent leaders. Her work explores contemporary migration, cultural identities and politics. Santilla is currently developing several factual and narrative projects. She writes regularly for The Saturday Paper and is a member of the federal government’s Advisory Group on Australia–Africa
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Sophie Cunningham
Sophie Cunningham is the author of six books including City of Trees: Essays on Life, Death and the Need for a Forest (Text, 2020). She is also the editor of the collection Fire, Flood, Plague: Australian writers respond to 2020 (Vintage, 2020).
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Aviva
AViVA, is an Australian author and musician, who describes herself as a multidisciplinary artist. With international success, AViVA has garnered over 3 billion global streams on her music to date and has created a groundswell online, building a strong community of fans - her 'Outsiders'.
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Having always been a lover of stories and made-up worlds, she has fed her passion for self-expression with a healthy lifestyle of creativity and writing.
When not writing music or touring the world, AViVA can be found in her home library either nose deep in a good book, fingers busy writing at the keyboard or otherwise occupied in her art studio, sewing or making something else she's dreamt up.
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Frank Walker
Frank Walker is a veteran journalist. His newspaper roles have included being chief reporter for the SUN-HERALD covering defence, veterans' affairs, national security and terrorism. He's also worked on the Sydney Morning Herald, the National Times, for News Limited in New York, and for Deutsche Welle international radio in Germany.
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In 2009, Hachette published his first book, The Tiger Man of Vietnam - the remarkable true story of the secret war of Captain Barry Petersen in the Central Highlands of Vietnam. It was a bestseller.
Frank followed this with his bestselling Ghost Platoon in 2012, Maralinga in 2014 and Commandos in 2015. He lives in Sydney with his family. -
Michael Veitch
Michael Veitch spent much of his youth writing and performing in television sketch comedy programs, before freelancing as a columnist and arts reviewer for newspapers and magazines. For four years he presented Sunday Arts, the national arts show on ABC television, and produced two books indulging his life-long interest in the aircraft of the Second World War, Flak and Fly. He lives in Hobart, where he presents ABC radio.
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Books:
Hailing from a family of journalists, Veitch wrote Flak – True stories from the men who flew in World War II published in 2006 by Pan Macmillan and later, Fly: True stories of courage and adventure from the airmen of World War II published by Penguin Australia in August 2008. A third book, The Forgotten Islands, explor -
Ceridwen Dovey
Ceridwen Dovey grew up in South Africa and Australia, studied as an undergraduate at Harvard, and now lives in Sydney. Her first novel, Blood Kin, was translated into fifteen languages and selected for the US National Book Foundation’s prestigious ‘5 Under 35’ award. J.M. Coetzee called it ‘A fable of the arrogance of power beneath whose dreamlike surface swirl currents of complex sensuality.' Her second work of fiction, Only the Animals, will be published by Penguin in 2014 (Australia) and Farrar, Straus & Giroux in 2015 (USA).
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Darren Rix
Darren Rix, a Gunditjmara-GunaiKurnai man with Ngarigo bloodlines, grew up in the tin huts and tents of ‘Silver City’, South Nowra, with his eleven siblings. His family later got their first house in the Bega Valley, and he attended school in Bega. At fourteen, Darren moved to Ngunnawal country – Canberra – to which he has songline ties through his Ngarigo bloodlines. He has worked as a radio reporter for the Brisbane Indigenous Media Association, and with the Ngunnawal people as a cultural sites officer in Canberra. Darren is an accomplished musician, as was his uncle, Archie Roach. He has appeared in the TV program Rake. Darren has six children and twelve grandchildren.
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Thomas Mayor
Thomas Mayor is a Torres Strait Islander man born on Larrakia country in Darwin. As an Islander growing up on the mainland, he learned to hunt traditional foods with his father and to island dance from the Darwin community of Torres Strait Islanders. In high school, Thomas’s English teacher suggested he should become a writer. He didn’t think then that he would become one of the first ever Torres Strait Islander authors to have a book published for the general trade.
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Instead, he became a wharf labourer from the age of seventeen, until he became a union official for the Maritime Union of Australia in his early thirties. Quietly spoken in character, Thomas found his voice on the wharves. As he gained the skills of negotiation and organising i -
Chris Sarra
Born in Queensland’s Bundaberg in 1967 as the youngest of 10 children to an Italian father and an Aboriginal mother, Chris Sarra is now the head of the Stronger Smarter Institute at QUT. He was formerly the principal of Cherbourg State School. He has had an extensive career in education, completing a Diploma of Teaching, a Bachelor of Education, a Master of Education and a PhD in Psychology.
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