Katherine Battersby (QLD, children's)

Katherine is a children’s writer, whose short stories are soon to appear in The School Magazine and educational resources.  Her current project is a mid-grade fantasy novel, however she also enjoys writing picture books for older readers and young adult novels.  As an aspiring illustrator, she is also completing a bachelor of graphic design at the Queensland College of Art.  By day she works as an Occupational Therapist, helping young people adjust to chronic illness and psychological issues.  She currently lives in sunny Brisbane with her ever patient partner and slightly less patient puppy.

Tony Berry (VIC, fiction)

Tony has spent half a century working as a journalist in the UK and Australia and only recently turned his hand to becoming a creative writer. He has since completed two novels – crime stories of murder, bribery and corruption among developers, brothel-owners and bureaucrats in Melbourne’s inner-city suburb of Richmond. Throughout the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s Tony explored the world as a travel writer (including stints as travel editor of The Age, the Adelaide Advertiser and the Sunday Observer). He has edited trade and technical journals, a glossy monthly lifestyle magazine and the mass market Australian Post. For the past 17 years he has been checking and editing other writers’ work as a senior sub-editor on the Herald Sun. Tony is in the third year of a professional writing diploma course at Melbourne CAE.

Stephanie Bishop (UK, fiction)

Stephanie was born in Sydney in 1979. Her first novel The Singing was published in 2005 and in 2006 she was named one of The Sydney Morning Herald’s Best Young Novelists. She is currently completing her PhD at the University of Cambridge and is working on her third novel Little England. She is also a frequent reviewer and essayist with her work appearing in the Australian Literary Review, the Australian Book Review and the Sydney Morning Herald.

Karen Blair (WA, picture book illustration)

Karen was born and raised in Perth. After completing a Bachelor of Arts at UWA she spent 3 years in England with here husband Karl. It was there she realised that her dream was to create picture books. They returned to WA in 2002 and live in beautiful Fremantle with their mischievous cats, Whitby and Puddle. She now works part-time as an art teacher and spends the rest of her time in her studio working on her picture book, drawing, sewing, painting and doing pet portraits and landscape artwork for her business Memento Art.

Michelle Cahill (NSW, poetry)

Michelle writes poetry and fiction. Her poetry collection The Accidental Cage was shortlisted in the 2007 Judith Wright Poetry Award. This year she has been awarded with a Professional Development Grant from the CAL to attend the New Delhi Poetry Workshop. She is the editor of a transnational collection Poetry Without Borders (Picaro, 2008) and co-editor of Mascara Poetry which aims to promote diversity. She has presented papers on migrant writing at Flinders University and The University of Queensland.

Meredith Capp (VIC, picture book illustration)

Mem is an artist and an aspiring writer and illustrator of children's books.  In 2004, after the premature birth of her twin daughters she decided to take the plunge and exit the teaching profession to follow her creative passions.  In a little room above a pub in an inner Melbourne suburb she beavers away at her art, often to the thump of music below.  In 2008, after 3 years of working on her picture-book ideas she began the Professional Writing and Editing Course at RMIT.  Mem lives with her partner, four children and numerous other creatures.

Susan Coleridge (VIC, young adult)

Susan's children’s novel, Gold Fever, is set on the Ballarat gold fields and was published in 2006 by Lothian Books. Her short stories have been published in The Best Australian Stories: 2004, Island magazine and broadcast on the ABC. Her current project is a story set in the Western District of Victoria in the 19th century. When not writing, Susan teaches Language and Literacy at Ballarat University.

Adam Deverell (VIC, young adult)

Adam is the author of two children's books, The Big Day Off! and Fire!Fire!, both published by BlueCatBooks. His interest in YA fiction began during a Professional Writing TAFE course. He enjoys reading all YA fiction, particularly Robert Cormier's gritty novels, Sonya Hartnett's stylistic prose and the humour of Sue Townsend (Adrian Mole diaries). He is a communications officer for a Melbourne water retailer and lives in Altona Meadows, in the western suburbs of Melbourne. He also enjoys travel writing and has been published in The Age, Sydney Morning Herald and in The Guardian UK.

Michelle Dicinoski (QLD, poetry)

Michelle's poems have appeared in The Best Australian Poems 2004, The Australian Literary Review, and The Australian. Her unpublished manuscript, Electricity for Beginners, was highly commended in the 2006 Arts Queensland Thomas Shapcott Award. She lives in Brisbane and is completing a PhD in creative writing at the University of Queensland.

Andrea Dudley (QLD, fiction)

Andrea is an undergraduate on the Creative Writing program at the University of the Sunshine Coast. Originally trained as a gold and silversmith in England, Andrea is also a qualified horticulturist. She is unpublished, unknown and unbelievably happy to be writing. She is working on her first fiction novel.

Rosalind Dunphy (NSW, children's)

Rosalind was born in New Zealand and grew up in a family passionate about writing and books. She has lived in Canada, New York and London, and has enjoyed a number of different occupations including Paediatric Intensive Care nursing, Rehabilitation Consultancy and Medical Risk Management. With published authors in her immediate family, she enjoyed writing amusing stories and poetry for her two sons, which led to the idea for her first novel for the 8-12 year old age group. She has plans in place for a second novel, which will be written to appeal to independent readers aged 10+. Rosalind has lived in Sydney with her husband and two sons for the past seven years.

Meg English (NSW, picture book illustration)

Meg completed a B.Sc. in Psychology before studying at the Julian Ashton Art School. She moved to Japan at age 23 to teach English and study calligraphy, where she exhibited at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum. A year later she moved to France, then eventually Spain, Italy and the UK, still painting and teaching. Back in Australia, she taught art, trained TESOL teachers and exhibited her works. Meg’s illustrations have been published in one book and she illustrates and writes for a mini-magazine for parents. Agatha The Witch is her first attempt at writing and illustrating her own book. Meg lives with her partner, two very small, beautiful children and a very old cat, who are her inspiration and manuscript reviewers (except the cat who’s not up to much these days).

Mitchell Lewis (NSW, fiction)

Mitch was a source of frustration for his second grade teacher, Mrs Jackson, who despaired of his two line stories about baseball. He forgot about writing for twenty years before he was forced to open the batting and write match reports for his cricket team. He was almost a columnist for a women’s magazine but luckily for all it didn’t work out. His first short story, Australia Day, was published in Short and Twisted 2008. Mitch Lewis lives in Sydney with his wife Belinda, their truck-loving toddler Aaron and a child who will be born and named shortly.

Georgina Luck (VIC, fiction)

Georgina is a playwright and short fiction writer. Her short stories have been published in Overland, Famous Reporter and Woorilla literary journals. She has won two playwriting awards and her plays have been performed in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane. Her latest short script was short-listed and performed in the Top 90 section of the Sydney Short & Sweet 10-minute Play Festival (2008). Georgina was recently a recipient of a Varuna Writers’ Centre Retreat Fellowship.

Victor Marsh (NSW, non-fiction)

During twenty years in television - in Sydney, Melbourne and Los Angeles – Victor worked on shows as varied as Young Talent Time and Beyond 2000, and he reviewed movies on Don Lane's Late Night Oz. Previously, as a theatre critic, he agitated for the cause of Australian writing for the stage and acted at the Pram Factory Theatre in Carlton. During the 70s he spent a decade of rigorous but blissful life as a monk, teaching meditation on behalf of his guru in a dozen countries throughout East Asia, North America, Australia and the South Pacific. Victor recently completed a PhD at the University of Queensland, at the age of 62.

Brenton Eszra McKenna (SA, graphic novel)

Brenton is an emerging graphic novelist originally from Broome WA now living in Adelaide SA where he has been based for the past six years. He is 26 years old, a father of three, and is of Aboriginal decent. Writing and drawing has always been a great passion of his since childhood. It has taught him a lot about himself and the world. In 2002 he moved to Adelaide where he started writing a manuscript for his graphic novel. It is now at the stage where it is being edited for the final draft where he can hopefully start the illustration process.

Kathleen Noud (QLD, young adult)

As a kid, Kathleen fancied herself as the Indiana Jones of Palaeontology. Her dreams were crushed when she discovered a Palaeontologist’s life wasn’t a cross between Indiana Jones and Jurassic Park, and that she wouldn’t be saving rare artefacts from bad guys. Nowdays, Kathleen is passionate about her Young Adult adventure novel, Blood Sun, and is constantly creating hellish situations for her characters to face. She has completed the Year of the Edit and Year of the Novel courses with Kim Wilkins at the Queensland Writers Centre and holds a degree in Creative Writing from QUT. She is also the secretary of Fantastic Queensland.

 Jean O’Hart (WA, non-fiction)

After many years following a career in both teaching and nursing administration the length and breadth of Western Australia, Jean finally realised her ambition to write a book.  She is at last able to concentrate on completing her manuscript.  A manuscript written from the heart, giving account of the experiences and challenges for a child with a serious disability to reach their best potential, be accepted in society and survive in this inhospitable world.  At the same time drawing to the attention of people who have the power to make a difference, the value of their meaningful support.

Sarah St Vincent Welch (ACT, fiction)

Sarah tutors in creative writing and literary studies at the University of Canberra. Her short story collection in progress, With Child, received support with an emerging writers new work grant from the Australia Council. She has co-edited anthologies, and a community history. She studied English Literature at the University of Sydney, and Media at the University of Canberra, and pursued a career in film preservation at the National Film and Sound Archive before teaching writing in the community. She has lived in Canberra for twenty years. She loves the short story form, but also aspires to write novels and scripts.

Elizabeth Stewart (VIC, children's)

Elizabeth grew up in a small country town in Australia’s high country and was put to work on the family farm early in life. She travelled overseas and lived in Tokyo and London working in various jobs such as vacuuming tatami mats, golf caddying, teaching English and washing frozen squid. Now living and working in Melbourne, Elizabeth often thinks she should write more regularly but is distracted by the need to hold down a full time job and a long standing addiction to television.