Ian Britain

Ian Britain is former editor of Meanjin where he had produced more than twenty issues on a wide range of themes, including biography, drugs, psychology and religion. The author of three books: Fabianism and Culture: A Study in British Socialism and the Arts, 1884-1918 (Cambridge University Press, 1982; republished in paperback 2005); Once an Australian: Journeys with Barry Humphries, Clive James, Germaine Greer and Robert Hughes (Oxford, 1997; paperback edition 1998); and The Oxford Book of Australian Schooldays (1997; paperback edition, 1998) co-edited with Brenda Niall. He is currently editing a one volume edition of The Diaries of Donald Friend, to be published by Text in 2010.

He is also at work on a biography of Donald Friend. Ian regularly writes book reviews and cultural commentary for newspapers and for Australian Book Review , has appeared frequently on ABC radio, and has been a guest speaker at various writers' festivals. He has been a judge of the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards (non-fiction category) since 2004, serving as convenor of the judging panel in 2006.

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Joanne Carroll

Joanne Carroll was born in Sydney and divides her time between Ireland and Australia. She is the author of two well received works of fiction, In the Quietness of My Aunt's House ( UQP, 1997) and The Italian Romance (UQP, 2005) which was chosen as a Great Read by Australian Women's Weekly.

In 2000, she was awarded a Master of Philosophy in Creative Writing from Trinity College Dublin, and in 2006 she was awarded a Literature Bursary from the Irish Arts Council. She is at work on a new novel The Rhapsody of Sweeney, set in the 19th century in both Australia and Ireland.

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Andrew Clark

Andrew Clark is special writer for the Australian Financial Review and a former literary editor of The Age. His work has also appeared in the New York Times, the Financial Times, the Guardian, and the Far Eastern Economic Review among other publications. A noted financial journalist and social commentator, he has given guest lectures at Yale University, the Budapest University of Economics and the Menzies Centre in London. In 1976 he published Kerr's King Hit (Cassell, Australia); co-written with CJ Lloyd, the first book on the November 1975 sacking of the Whitlam Labor government.

Clark is currently writing a major history of the Australian-American relationship which will be published by Scribe Publishing.
 
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Peter Cochrane

Historian Peter Cochrane is the author of the critically acclaimed companion volume to the ABC television series Australians at War (ABC Books, 2001) and Simpson and the Donkey: The Making of a Legend (Melbourne University Press, 1992).  His most recent book is Colonial Ambition: Foundations of Australian Democracy (Melbourne University Publishing, 2007), which won the inaugural Prime Minister's History Award and The Age Book of the Year Award.

He is currently at work on a new project, Governor Bligh's Factotum, which blends historical fact with the techniques of fiction to create a tale of public uproar and private tragedy in early Sydney.  Based on the life of enterprising emancipist Andrew Thompson, who became Chief Constable at the Hawkesbury River and factotum to William Bligh, Governor of NSW, the book tells the story of the tumultuous events that led to the 'Rum Rebellion' of 1808. 
                                    
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Avner Cohen

Probably the most recognized and well-informed voice on Israel's nuclear affairs, Dr Avner Cohen is Senior Research Fellow at the Center for International and Security Studies (CISSM) and the Program on Global Security and Disarmament (PGSD), both at the University of Maryland. He is also an adjunct professor in the Department of Political Science at George Washington University, as well as an independent consultant on nuclear proliferation and Middle East issues.

He is the co-editor of Nuclear Weapons and the Future of Humanity (Rowman & Allanheld, 1986), The Institution of Philosophy (Open Court, 1989), and the author of The Nuclear Age as Moral History (in Hebrew, 1989) and Israel and The Bomb , (Columbia University Press, 1998 and Schoken Publishing House, Israel, 2000).

He is the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Research and Writing Award for his latest project The Last Taboo: Nuclear Weapons, Secrecy and the Threat to Democratic Government which examines Israel's policy of amimut or opacity regarding its nuclear capability and how this effects Israel both nationally and internationally. The Last Taboo will be published by Columbia University Press.

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Paul Collins

Paul Collins is a broadcaster, writer and one of Australia's foremost intellectuals and commentators on cultural and religious affairs.  His most recent book is, Believers: Does Australian Catholicism Have a Future?, published by the University of New South Wales Press in April 2008.

Paul's last book Burn: The Epic Story of Bushfire in Australia, was published by Allen and Unwin, Australia in 2006.  His book, God's New Man: The Legacy of Pope John Paul II and the Election of Benedict XVI, was published in 2006 by Melbourne University Publishing in Australia and Continuum Books in the United Kingdom and the United States.

In June 2004 ABC Books published Between The Rock and a Hard Place: Being Catholic Today, a thought-provoking and encouraging examination of what makes a Catholic, the nature of Catholicism and how Catholics perceive themselves in the world.

A graduate of both Harvard and the Australian National University, he is the author of seven books, including Papal Power: A Proposal for Change in Catholicism's Third Millennium (HarperCollins, 1997) and From Inquisition to Freedom: Seven Prominent Catholics and their Struggle with the Vatican (Simon & Schuster Australia, 2001; Continuum UK, 2001; Overlook Press in the US).  His bestselling book Hell's Gates: The Terrible Journey of Alexander Pearce Van Diemen's Land Cannibal, published by Hardie Grant in Australia in November 2002, was described by Thomas Keneally as "a work of great quality . utterly fascinating".

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Geoff Davies

Geoff Davies is a geophysicist and a senior fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study at the Australian National University, Canberra. He has also taught at Harvard, the University of Rochester and Washington University. He is the author of Dynamic Earth: Plates, Plumes and Mantle Convection (Cambridge University Press, 1999). His most recent book, Economia: New Economic Systems to Empower People and Support the Living World, a radical critique of classical economics, was published by ABC Books in Australia in early 2004.

Hugh Stretton, Social Scientist and Author said of Economia:

"Geoff Davies' project is distinguished by such common sense, hard science, practicality, surprise, fine writing and expert contempt for orthodox economics, that it's a joy to read for visionaries and skeptics alike."

For more information on Geoff Davies you can visit his website: www.geoffdavies.com

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Justine Davies

Justine Davies is a financial planner and member of the Financial Planning Association. Inspired by years advising her clients, she chose to write a series of "Financial Guide" books to provide assistance to readers through various life stages. "People need a book that is relevant to them, to what they are going through at that point in time. My aim is to use humour to try to make financial matters interesting to people, or at least easy to read."

Her most recent book, How to Afford a To Live Together, will be published by ABC Books in 2008.

Her first book in the same genre, How to Afford a Baby, was published by ABC Books in 2007. She is at work on a third book in the same genre, How to Afford a House.

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Mark Davis

Mark Davis is a writer of popular non-fiction and an academic. In Australia, where he lives, he is best known as the author of Gangland: Cultural Elites and the New Generationalism, (Allen & Unwin), a critically acclaimed 1997 best seller questioning the cultural hegemony of baby-boomers and the cultural marginalisation of young people. He is in demand as a commentator, has appeared as a guest on many Australian television and radio programs, and has written for most major Australian newspapers and magazines. He holds a PhD in English and Cultural Studies and teaches at the University of Melbourne, where he specialises in global public cultures and the media, with a focus on the rise of neo-conservatism and the new right. He is currently writing two books which will both be published by Melbourne University Publishing - Land of Plenty which will be published in 2008 and Dark Harvest: Globalisation and the New Racism which will be published in 2009.

Praise for Gangland

'Deserves to become a manifesto for a disenfranchised generation'

     Australian Financial Review

Peter Doherty

Peter Doherty is Laureate Professor, Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Melbourne. His latest book, A Light History of Hot Air, was published by Melbourne University Publishing in October 2007.  In 1996 he won the Nobel Prize for Medicine and Physiology for his pioneering work in immunology, and in 1997 was named Australian of the Year.  He conducts an active research program on influenza immunity, writes regularly for both the scientific and the general press and is a much sought after public speaker.

His first popular book The Beginner's Guide to Winning the Nobel Prize was published in Australia and New Zealand by Melbourne University Publishing in August 2005 and was be published in the USA by Columbia University Press in May 2006.  Translation rights for this title have been sold in Korea, Poland, Taiwan (Chinese Complex), India (English) and Germany.

To book Peter Doherty as a speaker please click here.

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John Durack

John Durack, a leading Sydney barrister, has recently completed his second novel, A Breath Tasting of Blood.  Inspired by the time he and his wife, Robyn, lived and worked in Broome, the main port town for the Kimberley in the north west of Australia, the novel is concerned with the fatal consequences of humiliating treatment of Aborigines and other "coloureds" by the whites early last century.  The rivalries, hatreds and conflict which official policies provoke - in both the oppressed and the oppressors - work as powerful undercurrents throughout the novel.

John has had several short stories published in magazines and anthologies.  He was awarded a Fellowship of Australian Authors prize for an unpublished first novel, an award which he shared with Elizabeth Jolley.  He is currently writing his third novel, also set in the Kimberely

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Keith Fennell

In 1995, aged just twenty-one, Keith Fennell was accepted into the Australian Special Air Service Regiment, the SAS. Over the next eleven years, operations took him from the jungles of East Timor to the rugged mountains of Afghanistan, from the Southern Indian Ocean to Iraq. What he learned about friendship, and about himself, changed him forever.

Fennell's missions forced him to stare death in the face many times. His experiences are shocking and confronting - but also inspiring.

His first book Warrior Brothers, an unflinching look inside the action and the fear, the tragedy and the bravery, of his service in Australian SAS, will be published in Australia and New Zealand by Random House in June 2008.

Keith is a public speaker and personal development coach. He lives with his family in a small coastal village south of Sydney.

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Zarah Ghahramani

Zarah Ghahramani was born in Tehran in 1981, two years after the Ayatollah Khomeini returned to Iran to establish the Islamic Republic. Zarah's life changed suddenly in 2001 when, after having taken part in student demonstrations she was arrested (literally snatched off the street and bundled into the back seat of a car) and charged with 'inciting crimes against the people of the Islamic Republic of Iran'.

Her interrogation in Evin Prison was harsh. After being released she was not permitted to return to University. She came to realize that she had no future in her native land. Robert Hillman, an Australian writer, met and befriended Zarah when he was in Iran in 2003, and eventually helped her to get to Australia where she now lives.

Zarah's book My Life as a Traitor, written with Robert Hillman, is a powerful and beautifully written memoir of her life in Iran, revealing the human face behind the turmoil of the modern Middle East. It has been published in: Australia and New Zealand by Scribe in 2007; the US by Farrar Straus and Giroux in 2008; United Kingdom by Bloomsbury, and Germany by Ullstein Buchverlage in 2008, and will be published in Czech Republic by Euromedia, in Portugal by Quid Novi, in Holland by The House of Books, in France by Presses de la Cite, and Sperling & Kupfer in Italy, all in 2008.Euor

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Chris Gilbey

Chris Gilbey is one of Australia's leading communications consultants and corporate strategists. He is the author of the best-selling How to Survive the Y2K Crisis in Australia (Transworld, 1999) and The Infinite Digital Jukebox: A Step-by-Step Guide to Accessing and Downloading CD-Quality Music from the Internet (published in Australia and New Zealand by Hardie Grant and in the US and the UK by Seven Stories Press, 2000). He is at work on a memoir about his life in the music business.

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Sandra Goldbloom Zurbo

Sandra Goldbloom Zurbo began writing fiction at the age of 50.  Her first novel, The Book of Rachel , was published by Allen & Unwin (1998).  It was twice in both the Australian Book Review and The Age Top Ten lists.   Sue Monk of the Brisbane Courier Mail said "it renders with sensitivity and poignancy Rachel's struggles . . . to reclaim her own life and independence . . . Goldbloom offers a thought-provoking tale, combined with some dazzling and beautifully written prose sequences in what is a fine first novel."

Sandra Goldbloom Zurbo's short stories and poetry have been published in magazines and newspapers, including Westerly, Generation and The Age, and in an anthology of modern Australian Jewish writers, Enough Already (Allen & Unwin, 1999).  A freelance non-fiction editor she is currently working on her second novel which is set in Melbourne and New York.

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Richard Guilliatt

Richard Guilliatt has been a journalist for 30 years and is the author of Talk Of The Devil - Repressed Memory and the Ritual Abuse Witch-Hunt (Text 1996). He is currently working on The Wolf Odyssey: The True Story of an Epic Journey of Destruction in World War I with Peter Hohnen, which will be published in 2009 in Australia by Random House, in the UK by Transworld, and in the US and Canada by The Free Press.

Born in the UK, Richard was a feature writer at The Age newspaper in Melbourne, Australia, before moving to New York in 1986 to work as a freelance writer. His work has appeared in many leading newspapers and magazines including The Independent , The Sunday Times Magazine , The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times . He is currently a staff writer at the Weekend Australian Magazine in Sydney. In 2000 he won Australia's highest award for magazine feature writing, the Walkley.

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Rodney Hall

Rodney Hall is an author with an international reputation. His books are published in the USA, UK, Australia and Canada and in translation into German, French, Danish, Swedish, Spanish, Portuguese and Korean. His many radio and TV scripts have been broadcast by the ABC and the BBC.

He has twice won the Miles Franklin Award (for Just Relations in 1982 and The Grisly Wife in 1994) and been three times nominated for the Booker Prize. He won the Canada-Australia Award in 1988 and the Victorian Premier's prize for Captivity Captive in 1989. He was presented with the gold medal of the Australian Literature Society in 1992 and again in 2001.

His thirty-four books include twelve collections of poems, twelve novels, two biographies and several books of social commentary. His play, A Return to the Brink was commissioned for the Melbourne International Festival in 2001. He also wrote the libretto and scenario for a music-theatre piece, Whispers , with music by Andrew Ford. The New York Times praised him as, "A thrillingly smart and juicy writer." The Saturday Review (USA) said, "He immediately establishes his place among the best writers of his time."

His most recent novel, Love without Hope, was published by Pan Macmillan in February 2007.

Robert Hillman

Robert Hillman is the co-author with Zarah Ghahramani of My Life as a Traitor, the harrowing story of Zarah's life under the Islamist regime in Iran. It was published in 2007 in Australia by Scribe Publishing, and will be published in 2008: in the US by Farrar, Straus and Giroux; in the UK by Bloomsbury; in France by Presses de la Cite; in Holland by The House of Books; in Sweden by Brombergs Bokforlag; in Germany by Ullstein; in Italy by Sperling & Kupfer; and in Czech by Euromedia. He is also working on two other projects; a new novel; and a book of literary satires.

Robert Hillman's previous book, The Boy in the Green Suit (Scribe, 2003), a memoir of the novelist as a confused but determined teenage adventurer who flees a desolate family scene at home and embarks on an odyssey through the Middle East in the 1960s, won the prestigious Australian National Biography Award 2005.  The Boy in the Green Suit has been published by Summersdale in the UK and by Giano Editore in Italy.

He is the author of four well-received earlier works of fiction, A Life of Days (Angus and Robertson, 1988), Hour of Surprise (Simon & Schuster, 1990) and Writing Sparrow Hill (1996). His most recent novel is The Deepest Part of the Lake (Scribe Publishing, 2001).  Thomas Keneally said of it "Robert Hillman is a fine novelist.  Not only does his book teem with engrossing characters, but it is crowded with voices narrating intimate tales with stinging authenticity. This is a book which, by telling us afresh the tales we thought we already knew, changes the banal into the glorious."

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Peter Hohnen

Peter Hohnen studied history and law at the Australian National University and was a partner in a prominent Canberra law firm for 20 years. A commander in the Royal Australian Naval Reserve for 20 years, he was posted to Cambridge University in 1999 to study the law of the sea and the laws of armed conflict as a visiting fellow at the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law. On his return to Australia he was awarded a Masters Degree in Law from ANU in 2002. He has been an independent legal consultant to the Australian War Memorial in Canberra and has made several contributions to the Australian Dictionary of Biography . He is currently working on a non-fiction project - The Wolf Odyssey : The True Story of an Epic Journey of Destruction In World War I with Richard Guilliatt, which will be published in 2009 in Australia by Random House, in the UK by Transworld, and in the US and Canada by The Free Press.

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Adrienne Howley

One of only a handful of fully ordained Buddhist nuns in Australia, the Venerable Adrienne Howley is the author of The Naked Buddha: A New Look at an Old Religion (Random House/Transworld, 1999) and The Naked Buddha Speaks: Your Questions about Buddhism Answered (Bantam Books, 2002). Her books have been translated into German and Czech and Indonesian rights have been sold to PT Bhuana Ilmu Populer.  Indian English language editions of both books were published by Health and Harmony, 2004 and in the US a conflated version of both books was published by Marlowe & Company in 2004. She is currently at work on a new project Buddha and the Enticing Woman that examines the unique role of women in Buddhism and has recently completed Lady in Waiting: A Memoir which tells the story of her extraordinary life.


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Adrian Hyland

After studying languages and literature at Melbourne University, Adrian Hyland moved to Central Australia where he lived for ten years working in community development in remote Aboriginal communities and travelling with the Warlpiri people in the Tanami Desert on hunting and cultural trips. This extraordinary experience gave him an understanding of the complexity, richness, joy and hardships of contemporary Australian aboriginal life, an understanding which he has drawn on to write his first crime novel, Diamond Dove in which his heroine, Emily Tempest, a feisty twenty-nine year old Aboriginal woman "with a fast mouth and a strong right hook," investigates the untimely death of an Aboriginal elder.  Diamond Dove was published in Australia by Text in August 2006 to rave reviews, and won the 2007 Ned Kelly Award for Best First Crime Novel. It was published in the UK in August 2007 by Quercus Publishing, and, under the title Moonlight Downs, it was published in 2008 by SoHo Press.

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Helen Irving

Helen Irving is the author and editor of six books, including To Constitute a Nation: A Cultural History of Australia's Constitution (CUP 1997 & 1999); The Centenary Companion to Australian Federation (CUP 1999, shortlisted for the NSW Premier's Centenary of Federation Prize 2001); and Five Things to Know about the Australian Constitution (CUP 2004). She is Associate Professor and Director of The Julius Stone Institute of Jurisprudence at the University of Sydney.  She writes and comments frequently in the media on constitutional law, Australian history, and political culture. In 2005-2006, she was the Visiting Chair of Australian Studies at Harvard Law School.

She is at work on her first novel, An Inquiry into Shelley's Drowning.

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David Jenkins

David Jenkins, who graduated in Law/Arts at Melbourne University, was the Melbourne Herald correspondent in Indonesia in 1969-70 and the Associated Press correspondent in Laos in 1973-75. He later spent eight years with the Far Eastern Economic Review, as Jakarta bureau chief, ASEAN correspondent and Regional Editor. A former Foreign Editor of the Sydney Morning Herald, he is the author of Suharto and His Generals, Indonesian Military Politics 1975-83, Cornell University, 1984.

He is currently at work on a biography of Soeharto, Indonesia's former ruler of thirty-two years. (1966-

84.

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Morris Kaplan

Morris Kaplan's most recent book Get Your Share was published by Hardie Grant in May 2005. It is essential reading for all who have ever wanted to invest in shares but haven't know how to. Get Your Share is a light, easy-to-read introduction to share investing which will provide a timeless guide for making money in the stock market. The book cuts through all the jargon and digests the essentials of share investing into a highly readable, practical guide.

In June 2003 Hardie Grant published Financial Freedom for Your Business. a comprehensive step-by-step guide to successfully starting and running your own business.  It leads the reader through the steps required to turn a business dream into reality, exploring the business, financial, managerial and marketing skills required to make your business a success.

A noted financial journalist and former stockbroker, Morris Kaplan is also the author of Beating the Banks: For Love Not Money (Transworld, 1999) and Five Years to Financial Freedom (Hardie Grant, 2001).

Morris' next book It's Payback Time: How to Retire Rich and Happy will be published by Hardie Grant in July 2007.

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Jacqueline Kent

Jacqueline Kent is a noted non-fiction and young adult fiction author. She has published two books of social history: Out of the Bakelite Box: The Heyday of Australian Radio (Angus and Robertson 1983, paperback ABC Books 1990) and In the Half Light: Life as a Child in Australia 1900-1970 (Angus and Robertson 1988, paperback Doubleday Australia 1991). Her young adult titles include: a novel Angel Claws I Love You (Puffin Books, 1992); a book of young adult short stories Bad Behaviour (with Joanne Horniman, Omnibus Books 1996) and four novels based on the popular ABC-TV series Heartbreak High (ABC Books, 1999).

Her most recent book A Certain Style (Viking, 2001, Penguin paperback, 2002), a biography of acclaimed Australian book editor Beatrice Davis, won the 2002 National Biography award and the 2002 Nita B.Kibble Award for Women Writers, and was also shortlisted for the New South Wales Premier's Award that year. Jacqueline's dramatised adaptation of A Certain Style was broadcast over ABC Radio National and released as a CD through ABC Audio Books in 2002.  Jacqueline reviews books for the Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian.

Her current project, An Exacting Heart: The Story of Hephzibah Menuhin, a biography of the musician and social activist Hephzibah Menuhin, was published by Penguin Australia in 2008.

You can visit her website at www. jacquelinekent.net

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Petrea King

Since her recovery from leukaemia in 1984, Petrea King, one of the most remarkable and charismatic figures in Australia, has brought her warmth, humour and wisdom to thousands of people with cancer and other serious illnesses and to people living with loss of meaning, grief, depression, anxiety or tragedy.

Petrea holds qualifications in naturopathy, herbal medicine, homeopathy, clinical hypnotherapy, massage and is a qualified teacher of meditation and yoga. She is the author of three acclaimed books - Quest for Life: A Handbook for People with Life-Threatening Illness (Random House, 1992), Spirited Women: Journeys with Breast Cancer (Random House, 1995) and Sometimes Hearts Have to Break (Random House, 1997). and has produced twenty relaxation and meditation audio-tapes and CD's to assist people in finding peace in the midst of life-challenges.

In 1990 she established the Quest for Life Foundation which now owns and operates the Quest for Life Centre in Bundanoon.  From this center she runs counselling and residential programs to help those facing major challenges find peace and meaning in their lives. More than 50,000 people have passed through her programs or sought counselling with her.

Petrea has received the Advance Australia Award and the Centenary Medal for her contribution to the community.  In 1996 she addressed the National Press Club on National Breast Cancer Day and is a frequent guest on ABC radio with Richard Glover (Mid-Week Conference) and Tony Delroy.

For more information on Petrea King visit her website www.questforlife.com.au

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