SAM BAILEY grew up on a grazing/cropping farm at Croppa Creek, on the north-west slopes of NSW, attending the small bush school at Croppa Creek before going away to board at The Armidale School (TAS). At TAS he excelled in rugby, cricket and athletics. At eighteen he headed north to Stonehenge, southwest of Longreach in outback Queensland, to work on a property. The following year he went to work as a jackaroo on the Australian Agricultural Company property Avon Downs in the Northern Territory.
Authors
Simon Eliot is a kid who knows a lot of really cool stuff – like that the buttock is the largest human muscle. Visit www.simoneliot.com to see some other cool stuff he has created.
Simon Nasht has worked as a journalist in newspapers, and on radio and TV, and most recently has worked as a documentary maker in Europe and Australia.
After a 25-year career spanning radio, newspaper and magazine journalism, including editing two of Australia’s top selling women’s magazines, The Australian Women’s Weekly and Woman’s Day, Susan Duncan woke up one morning and chucked in her job. The decision followed the deaths of her husband and brother.
Tara June Winch was born near Sydney in 1983, where she spent her childhood roaming the shorelines of the NSW south-coast, swimming and surfing. Tara is of Wiradjuri, Afghan and English heritage. In 2004 she won the David Unaipon Award for an Indigenous Writer for Swallow the Air. In 2003 she won the Maureen Donahue Award for the State Library of Queensland’s Young Writers Award. Tara is currently completing her study at Southern Cross University’s Ginibi Indigenous College. Her work is also included in Best Australian Stories 2005.
“Tara Moss is much more than a pretty face. She’s an international best-selling author, ambassador, television host, and reptile-wrangler…she may well become one of the world’s best-sellers.” - World Literature Today, 2006
Terry Denton is an award-winning illustrator and author of children’s books. His cheeky sense of humour and quirky drawing style are instantly recognised by children all around Australia. His talents have been combined with other authors to produce such classics as Spooner or Later, The Paw and Jack and Pete. Terry has also illustrated many of his own texts and created award winners such as Felix and Alexander, Home is the Sailor and the 1998 YABBA winning double Zapt! and Gasp.
Tiana Templeman is a Brisbane born and based travel writer. She is a spirited adventurer who has been exploring the globe since 1988 when she first travelled overseas as a young single. Two nuns fed her peppermints all the way to London on that trip. These days Tiana travels with her husband Trevor and son Tex.
Matthew Reilly was born in Sydney on July 2, 1974. He is the author of the international blockbusters, Ice Station, Temple, Contest and, as of September this year, Area-7.
In 1994, at age 19, Matthew Reilly completed his first novel, a thriller called Contest (he wrote it while he was doing the first year of his Law degree). He offered Contest to all of the major publishers in Sydney - who all rejected it.
Sally Morgan was born in Perth, Western Australia, in 1951 and grew up in suburban Manning. She completed a Bachelor of Arts degree at The University of Western Australia in 1974, majoring in Psychology. She also has post-graduate diplomas from the Western Australian Institute of Technology (now Curtin University of Technology) in both Counselling Psychology and Computing and Library Studies. She has three children.
Anna Fienberg says, 'My mother, Barbara, always read stories to me when I was little. At bedtime we'd travel to all the secret places in the world, through books.
'We both make up our own stories now, and Tashi began when Barbara was telling me how, when she was a child, she used to tell whoppers. And kids would crowd around, dying to hear the latest tale. We talked about a character like her - someone who told fantastic stories - and over many cups of tea we cooked up Tashi.'
Geraldine Brooks is the author of two acclaimed works of non-fiction, Nine Parts of Desire and Foreign Correspondence. She is also a former war correspondent whose writing has appeared in publications such as the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and the Guardian. Year of Wonders is her first novel.
Publisher: Fourth Estate A Division of HarperCollinsPublishers
BRYCE COURTENAY is the bestselling author of The Power of One, Tandia, April Fool’s Day, The Potato Factory, Tommo & Hawk, Jessica, Solomon’s Song, A Recipe for Dreaming, The Family Frying Pan, The Night Country, Smoky Joe’s Cafe, Four Fires and Matthew Flinders’ Cat.
The Power of One is also available in an edition for younger readers, and The Potato Factory, Tommo & Hawk and Solomon’s Song are available on one volume, The Australian Trilogy.
Mary Moody is a prolific gardening author and a former presenter on ABC TV’s ‘Gardening Australia’. Her books include The Good Life and A Gardener’s Companion.
Every year Mary leads treks to the Himalayas and tours of southwest France to observe native flora. She lives outside Bathurst NSW.
