From Gina Newton: I live in Canberra, Australia with my husband and two kids (Oskar 11 and Jazmin nearly 9), two dogs, two cats and a variety of fish. I am a marine scientist by training with many years working in research and policy. I am especially passionate about marine science and the marine environment.
Authors
Mystery surrounds the true identity of H.I Larry. Some say he (or she) is an ex-spy writing from real life experience. But we can’t know for sure.
Heather Rose is an author of two novels – White Heart and The Butterfly Man. The Butterfly Man was shortlisted for the Nita B Kibble Award and won the 2006 Davitt Award for the Crime Fiction Novel of the Year. It was also longlisted for the 2007 IMPAC Awards in Ireland.
Hugh Lunn has won 3 Walkley Awards and The Age Book of the Year award in 1985 for Vietnam. Hugh Lunn has been a journalist for most of his working life with stints for The Courier-Mail and London’s Daily Mirror. He was a foreign correspondent in Singapore, Vietnam and Indonesia for Reuters before joining The Australian newspaper, where he worked from 1971 to 1987.
From Ian Falconer: I was born in Connecticut in 1959. As a boy, I attended the Long Ridge School in Stamford. At the age of fourteen, I was sent away to the Cambridge School of Weston in Massachusetts. Both schools were liberal, experimental and progressive and allowed me to spend serious time concentrating on my artistic interests. For this I cannot thank my parents enough.
Born in Kiev in 1903, Irene Nemirovsky fled the Russian Revolution for France where she became an acclaimed novelist. She wrote over 10 novels, including the unfinished magnum opus Suite Francaise which was published posthumously in France in 2004 and has become an international bestseller. She died in Auschwitz in 1942.
James Phelan is a Melbourne-based freelance writer who writes for a variety of publications, including The Age. He holds a Master of Arts in Writing and is currently working on his PhD. He teaches in the Swinburne University Master of Arts Writing program. James also runs James Phelan Literary Services, a business created in 2001 to cater for everything from website content to marketing material and copywriting. He lives in Canterbury, Victoria.
John Grogan is an award-winning columnist for The Philadelphia Inquirer and a former editor in chief of Rodale’s Organic Gardening magazine. His first book, Marley & Me: Life and Love with the World’s Worst Dog, is a #1 international bestseller with 3 million copies in print and rights sold in more than two dozen languages.
He lives with his wife and three children, and their new dog, Gracie, in the Pennsylvania countryside.
John Marsden was born in Victoria, Australia in 1950. He went to many different primary schools, and from an early age enjoyed the journeys into magical worlds that reading could provide. His teachers in Grade 4 and Grade 6 encouraged him to write, and at the age of nine he decided he wanted to become an author.
Juliet Marillier was born in Dunedin, New Zealand, a town with strong Scottish roots. She graduated from Otago University with a BA in languages and an honours degree in music, and has had a varied career which includes lecturing in music history, professional singing, choral conducting and assessing tax returns. Juliet lives in the Swan Valley area near Perth, Western Australia.
Kate Forsyth is a bestselling fantasy novelist whose books have been published in the US, Germany and in Australia. Her series, The Witches of Eileanan, is six books in total. The first book, Dragonclaw, was short-listed for the 1997 Aurealis awards for Best Australian Fantasy Novel, debuted at No. 8 on the Locus “bestsellers” list and was chosen as one of the best fantasy books of the year in a Locus readers’ poll. Book 3, The Cursed Towers, was also shortlisted for the 1999 Aurealis awards in the same category.
Kate Morton was born in 1976 and grew up in the mountains of South East Queensland. She has degrees in Dramatic Art and English Literature, and is currently a doctoral candidate at the University of Queensland. Kate lives with her husband and young son in a hundred-year-old house in Brisbane. The Shifting Fog is her first novel.
Read more about Kate at www.katemorton.com
A children’s counting book, produced to complete a Bachelor of Design course in 1982, was the starting point of Kerry Argent’s illustrious career as a children’s book illustrator. This book, published by Omnibus Books, was the highly acclaimed One Woolly Wombat, which is now regarded as a classic Australian counting book.
Kilmeny Niland is a versatile artist in illustration and the fine arts, including portraiture.
After showing an aptitude for drawing chickens and giraffes at an early age, she was encouraged to develop those skills by studying at the Julian Ashton Art School for two years before travel and informal study in Britain and Europe.
Kim Edwards is the author of the short story collection The Secrets of a Fire King, which was an alternate for the 1998 PEN/Hemingway Award, and she has won both the Whiting Award and the Nelson Algren Award. A graduate of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, she currently teaches writing at the University of Kentucky. The Memory Keeper’s Daughter is her debut novel.