Alphabetical listing of 2006 authors

Emha Ainun Nadjib, also known as Cak Nun, is a prolific Indonesian poet, writer and columnist. Emha is a well-known Islamic spiritual leader and Moslem intellectual in Indonesia, as well as a poet, playwright and essayist. In this capacity he is frequently invited to contribute to seminars, open discussions, university meetings and many other events.

He is a humanist and a guru who has travelled widely in his home country, Indonesia, especially in the rural areas. He educates people and talks with them about their problems. He holds a regular public forum in seven different cities every month in which people express their feelings and ideas on anything they want. He has the credibility and influence to gather people from all components of society and persuade them to sit down and discuss issues together.

Emha’s writing covers a wide range of subjects, including personal contemplation, social comment, criticism of the ruling government, and social development. His views on a variety of subjects are based on Islamic teaching. As a writer and a columnist his writings can be found in various national media in Indonesia, and he has become a highly respected commentator on social and cultural matters in his country.

Emha is best known for his role in organising a group of Indonesian writers to write and deliver a letter to President Sueharto which was instrumental in persuading the President to step down and allow democratic elections in Indonesia.

Emha is also the music director and singer for the group Kiai Kanjang. This entourage of 15 poets and musicians performs songs, poetry and prayers, playing a hybrid of Javanese gamelan and percussion, Western-style pop, Javanese and Middle Eastern-derived singing, in an exotic fusion of traditional and contemporary music.

Ben Naparstek is a literary journalist, broadcaster and arts/law student at the University of Melbourne.

Margo Neale is an Indigenous Australian who has worked across art galleries, museums and universities and has held positions as art curator, author and editor for leading institutions in Australian and the Pacific She was co-editor of the Oxford Companion to Aboriginal Art and Culture, which was published in 2000 and was awarded the Power/Australian and News Zealand Art Association award.

Melbourne writer Brenda Niall is the author of four award-winning biographies including The Boyds (2002) and Judy Cassab (2005), the story of the celebrated Jewish-Hungarian refugee artist who came to Sydney in 1951.

Cameron Nunn

Cameron Nunn lives in north-west Sydney with his wife Belinda and their two children. He is Director of Studies and teaches English at St Paul’s Grammar School in Sydney’s outer west.
'My teachers did the best they could at school to beat any love of writing out of me by making us write on riveting topics like "What I did in the holidays". Nevertheless, I was determined to push on, and as a result had my first book rejected at 13. That put a downer on my ambition to be the next Shakespeare, so I adopted the usual approach, "If you can’t write like Shakespeare, become a teacher and make everyone read Shakespeare, even if it kills them!"
'I began seriously writing when a friend challenged me that it wasn’t fair if you made kids write but didn’t write yourself. There’s not a lot of credibility for the teacher who tells kids that writing’s fun, but never lifts a pen themself.
'Shadows in the Mirror is the first of what I hope will be many young-adult novels. Although the novel is fiction, it’s sadly based on a variety of real events. I think writing is really a process of exploring the ‘what ifs’ of our own experiences and those we observe. I love teaching and spending time with kids. It’s in listening to other people’s stories that the best novels come.'

Anthony O'Neill

Anthony O'Neill's third novel, The Empire of Eternity, is an elaborate history-mystery involving Napoleon and the early years of Egyptology. His first novel, Scheherazade, was a revisionist Arabian Nights adventure that was published to international acclaim. His second, the Victorian-era philosophical horror story The Lamplighter, has also been published in numerous European languages and is being developed as a film by writer-director Peter Howitt (Sliding Doors). With an enthusiasm for all genres (and an ongoing theme about the clash of reality and fantasy), O'Neill is currently working on a Parisian love story.

Helen O’Neill the author of Florence Broadhurst – her secret and extraordinary lives (Hardie Grant Books), is an award-winning British-born journalist and biographer who is based in Sydney.
Over the past 20 years her work has appeared in publications across the globe, including, in the UK, The Guardian, The Observer, The Sunday Telegraph, The Independent and The Independent on Sunday; in the USA US Conde Nast Traveler and Marie Claire; and in Australia titles ranging from The Australian and The Sydney Morning Herald newspapers to Cleo and Woman’s Weeklymagazines.
Since going freelance, she has worked on documentaries that have won international awards, including one which screened in over 200 countries. Becoming a freelance journalist also gave her the opportunity to start writing biographies. Life Without Limits, the David Pescud Story (Random House Australia) was published in 2003.

Paddy O'Neill

Paddy O'Reilly is a fiction and screenplay writer. Her numerous national story awards include The Age', the Judah Waten and the Glen Eira My Brother Jack. Her work has been published widely in literary magazines such as Meanjin, Southerly, Westerly and Island, as well as anthologised in volumes such as Best Australian Stories. The University of Queensland Press will publish a collection of her short fiction in early 2007.
Paddy's first novel, The Factory, is set in Japan. The Factory was noted as one of the best books of 2005 in ABR (Australian Book Review) and was Highly Commended in the FAW Christina Stead Award for Fiction. She has also written scripts for films which have been nominated for AFI awards and screened nationally and internationally. Paddy has been Asialink writer-in-residence in Japan, a fellow at Varuna: The Writers' House, and a full fellow at the Vermont Studio Center, USA.
Paddy lives in Victoria, Australia. She has spent several years living in Japan, working as a copywriter and translator.

Graeme Orr has been a freelance writer for thirty years, publishing more than a thousand articles in 41 countries and 13 languages. He lectured at Deakin University for six years under the Professional Writing Program.

Ruth Ostrow

Ruth Ostrow is one of Australia's leading Mind Body Soul writers, educators and keynote speakers, with her weekly columns in The Australian newspaper read by millions, and a host of best-selling books to her credit in the areas of sexuality, human relations, money, and wellbeing. A former finance journalist in the Greed is Good 80s with The Financial Review, then controversial radio broadcaster in the 90s in the area of sex and relationships, Ruth now focuses her speaking and writings on spirituality, life matters and wellbeing, from her home in Byron Bay where she moved from Sydney at the end of the 90s. Her latest books include Sacred & Naked; The Gift and Simple Pleasures.

John Hyde Page was a member of the Young Liberals between December 1997 and May 2004. From late 2001 until early 2004 he worked as an electorate officer with Peter King MP, the Liberal Member for Wentworth. He left the Liberal Party in May 2004 and is now studying for his graduate law degree at the University of New South Wales.

Edmundo Paz Soldán

Jose Edmundo Paz Soldán winner of the Juan Rulfo award for the short story (1997), finalist of the Romulo Gállegos award for the novel (1999), and winner of the Bolivian National Book Award in 2003 for his novel El delirio de Turing (published in English as Turing's Delirium), was born in 1967 in Cochabamba, Bolivia. He came to the U.S. thanks to a soccer scholarship offered by the University of Alabama. He holds a B.A. in Political Science (UAH, 1991), and a Ph.D. in Latin American Literature (Berkeley, 1997), and currently works as an Associate Professor of Hispanic Literature at Cornell University.

A leading exponent of the McOndo literary movement, he has published six novels, among them Río Fugitivo (1998), La materia del deseo (2001; English translation 2004), and El delirio de Turing (2003; English translation 2006). His novels have been translated into six languages. He has also published three books of short stories. His stories have been published in numerous anthologies, in languages including Spanish, German, English, and French. His articles and reviews have been published in several magazines and newspapers (TIME, The New York Times, Le Monde, El País). He lives in Ithaca, New York, is married and has a six-year-old son. His new novel, Palacio Quemado, is forthcoming this October. Turing's Delirium is published in Australia by Scribe.

Fred Pearce has been an editor and contributor to New Scientist magazine for more than 20 years, reporting on environmental and science issues from more than 60 countries. The most recent of his 14 books, both published this year, are When The Rivers Run Dry and The Last Generation - investigations of the planet's water and climate crises. He was UK environmental journalist of the year in 2001 and is a past recipient of the Peter Kent Conservation Book Award. He lives with his family in London, England.

Christopher Pearson was founding editor of The Adelaide Review and the Sydney Review. He served for two terms as a member of the Australia Council, he is a former speech writer for John Howard and is a columnist for The Australian.

Mark Peel teaches history at Monash University. He is the author of The Lowest Rung: Voices of Australian Poverty and is currently writing Miss Cutler and the Man Who Knew Too Much: Dramatising the Story of Poverty in the 1920s and 1930s.

Andrew Pegler

Andrew Pegler writes across the print and electronic divide, creating website reviews for Yahoo!, editing and providing copy for ninemsn, and writing features for major magazines and newspapers. He has also written for TV and the corporate world, including AGM reports, conference reports and copywriting.

He is writer/publisher of The Bugle (buglecorp.com), Melbourne’s leading satirical journal. He has written two books, John Howard’s Little Book of Truths and The Bugle’s Dicktionary. Andrew is editor of Monash Business Review, Monash University’s esteemed business journal publishing original research, including fully refereed academic articles, plus case studies, ideas, trends, special events and more.

As a journalist he has contributed to The Age, The Australian, Monument, Melbourne Magazine, Qantas In-flight Magazine and many others. His most recent article for Rolling Stone was an enthusiastic review of The Rolling Stones at Rod Laver Arena. He can also be heard on 774 ABC Melbourne. His broad range of corporate writing clients reaches across all industries from banking to education, from entertainment to travel, from telecommunications to fashion.

Andrew is course coordinator/lecturer of advertising at Monash University and also lectures at The Victorian Writers' Centre.

James Phelan

James Phelan grew up reading the greats in thriller writing: Tom Clancy, Alistair MacLean, Clive Cussler, Ken Folett and Robert Ludlum. He was fascinated by the pace and cinematic style of their books, and when he started his first novel as part of his VCE English assignment in 1995 he wanted to pay homage to these writers.

The novel involved a terrorist attack on the 2000 Sydney Olympics, but he eventually abandoned the storyline when Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six was published in 1998. He ditched the story but kept the protagonists, Lachlan Fox and Alister Gammaldi, and went in search of another tale.

After high school James went on to study architecture and then English Literature, eventually graduating with a Master of Arts in Writing. James’ first book Literati: Australian Contemporary Literary Figures Discuss Fear, Frustrations and Fame was published to critical acclaim in August 2005. He was then ready to introduce his two great action characters, Lachlan Fox and Alister Gammaldi. James lives in Melbourne and is working on the sequel to Fox Hunt. He teaches at Swinburne University and is studying for his PhD.
Angela Pippos was born in South Australia. She is a sports journalist with ABC-TV in Melbourne, where she presents the sports segment on the seven o’clock news. The Goddess Advantage is her first book.

Val Plumwood is a pioneer of environmental philosophy, publishing her numerous papers from the early 1970s onwards. Her major works include Feminism and the Mastery of Nature (a classic translated into numerous languages) and The Ecological Crisis of Reason.

Dorothy Porter

Dorothy Porter grew up in Sydney and the Blue Mountains but is now living in Melbourne. She is the author of six collections of poetry including Driving Too Fast, Crete and Other Worlds; two novels for young adults; and three previous verse novels, Akhenaten, The Monkey’s Mask ( which won The Age Book of the Year ), What a Piece of Work (shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award) and Wild Surmise. Her next verse novel to be published early 2007 by Picador is a crime thriller called El Dorado.

Dr Muriel Porter

Dr Muriel Porter OAM, a Melbourne author and journalist, is a frequent media commentator on religion, in particular writing occasionally on religion for The Age. She is heavily involved in the national and diocesan life of the Anglican Church and has been a leader in the debate over the ordination of women since the mid-1980s.

Muriel has written numerous books on current controversial topics concerning religion in Australia, the most recent being The New Puritans: The Rise of Fundamentalism in the Anglican Church, published by MUP in 2006. Now an honorary fellow of the University of Melbourne History Department, Dr Porter was until last year Senior Lecturer in Journalism at RMIT University. She stepped down from a full-time academic role to concentrate on writing.


Steve Pratt MLA, is an ex-Australia CARE Australia worker who along with Peter Wallace was convicted of spying at the height of NATO bombings in the former Yugoslavia in 1999. He is now a Liberal MLA in the ACT.

Matt Price is an award-winning columnist and parliamentary sketch writer with The Australian’s Canberra bureau.

Ann-Marie Priest’s essay Toward an Erotics of Readingwas published in the The Best Australian Essays 2004, edited by Robert Dessaix and published by Black Inc. She has a Phd in English literature and works in the Communications Learning Centre at Central Queensland University. Great Writers, Great Loves is her first book. In researching this highly original work Priest pored over the published writings, biographies and private correspondence of these eight legendary writers. By revealing their deepest passions and obsessions, this book breathes life into some of the most compelling personalities of the last century. As well as providing insight into relationships long over, Great Writers, Great Loves sheds new light on what drives our search for intimacy today.