The Writers

Amruta Slee
Amruta Slee began her career as a reporter at The Sydney Morning Herald, before moving to television as a researcher/producer for Channel Nine, and then back to print as a feature writer for The Sun-Herald. In 1991 she moved to New York where she wrote for several US, UK and Australian publications including The New York Times, The Times of London, Harper's Bazaar and hq magazine. She has contributed to two anthologies, Dick for a Day and To Be Real. In 1998 she moved back to Australia to become a feature writer/deputy editor of hq magazine, and then deputy editor at Good Weekend where she both wrote and edited for four years. In 2004 Amruta moved into publishing as an associate publisher of non-fiction for HarperCollins. She has published Eric Campbell, Sally Neighbour, Christopher Kremmer and Andrew Main among others, and also worked on several illustrated, gift and cooking books.

Edna Carew
Edna Carew is the author of more than a dozen books including the best-selling Fast Money and Language of Money series, Paul Keating, Prime Minister and Westpac, the Bank that Broke the Bank. With an MA from the University of Edinburgh, Edna came to Sydney in 1974, initially working in an investment bank before joining the staff of The Australian Financial Review where she initiated the paper’s daily coverage of financial markets. After leaving the AFR  she was founding editor of Triple A, a financial magazine covering Australasia. She has been a regular contributor to several publications, including Forum, HQ, The Bulletin, BRW, Australian Business, Personal Investment, Euromoney and Far Eastern Economic Review. In recent years Edna has concentrated on writing company histories, including Brambles Industries and the Australian Stock Exchange (to be published by Allen & Unwin later in 2006). Edna has lived on Scotland Island for the past eight years.

Jacqueline Kent
Jacqueline Kent is a Sydney-based writer and book editor. She has a particular interest in writing biography and non-fiction, and has written fiction for young adults. She is also a book reviewer and radio scriptwriter.

Her first book was Out of the Bakelite Box: The Heyday of Australian Radio, a social and oral history of Australian radio, drawing heavily on interviews. In the Half Light: Life as a Child in Australia 1900–1970consists of reminiscences of people from all walks of life, with emphasis on events and personalities in Australian life seen through a child’s eyes. A Certain Style: Beatrice Davis, A Literary Life,the biography of a pioneering Australian book editor, won the 2002 National Biography Award, as well as the Nita B. Kibble Award for Women Writers; it was also shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Award.

Her books for young adults include Angel Claws I Love You (Penguin 1992) and Bad Behaviour (with Joanne Horniman, Omnibus 1996) as well as novelisations of the ABC TV series Heartbreak High.

She has received several grants from the Australia Council for the Arts, and was the 1995 Beatrice Davis Fellow, enabling her to work in and study book publishing in New York for three months. She is currently studying for a Doctorate of Creative Arts at the University of Technology, Sydney, and working on the biography of the concert pianist and social activist Hephzibah Menuhin, as well as a revision of In the Half Light.

Jean Bedford
Jean Bedford is an Australian novelist and short-story writer. She has worked as a journalist and a publisher’s editor and has taught creative writing for many years. She lectures in creative writing at the University of Technology, Sydney.

John Bryson
John Bryson is the author of Evil Angels, the documentary novel of the Azaria Chamberlain case, which became a Fred Schepisi film with Meryl Streep and Sam Neill.  Fist published in 1985, it won three Australian and two British literary awards including the British Crime Writers’ Golden Dagger, and is translated into nine languages.  Evil Angels is now re-released by Hodder Headline Australia.

John’s essays and feature journalism appear in major newspapers and journals treating diverse topics, notably a Haitian coup, post-invasion Panama, the Dyak people, and the Sandinistas of Nicaragua.  His first book, a collection of short fiction, Whoring Around, was published in 1981 by Penguin Australia and by Spektrum in Berlin.  A report of his tour of the outback with the ANC cultural ensemble Amandla became the title piece for Backstage at the Revolution, a collection of reportage published by Penguin Australia

To the Death, Amic is his novel of Barcelona during the Spanish civil war, published by Penguin/Viking in Australia and Hamish Hamilton in UK.  It is now translated into Spanish.  In 1997 he was commissioned by The Australian newspaper to cover the Hong Kong Handover, a piece titled “Parties All Over Town”. 

In 2004 he originated, wrote and compiled as associate producer for SBS TV Australia the documentary “Secrets of the Jury Room”, in which two separated juries deliberated on a mercy killing trial.

In 2000, a Schools of Journalism panel included him in “The 100 Journalists of the Century”.

Michael Wilding
Michael Wilding was born in Worcester, read English at Oxford, and has taught literature and creative writing at the University of Birmingham, the University of California at Santa Barbara, and the University of Sydney, where he is emeritus professor. He is author of a dozen volumes of fiction including The Paraguayan Experiment (Penguin), Under Saturn (Black Swan), Great Climate (Faber), Wildest Dreams (UQP), Academia Nuts (Wild & Woolley) and Raising Spirits, Making Gold and Swapping Wives: the True Adventures of DrJohn Dee and Sir Edward Kelly (Shoestring), one of The Economist's Books of the Year. He is a former Cosmopolitan Bachelor of the Month and fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. He has lived on Scotland Island for 14 years. His latest book is Wild Amazement (CQUP), a novel in the form of an autobiography, or vice versa.

Peter Corris
Peter Corris's first novel was published in 1980 and he has been a full-time writer since 1982. He is credited with reviving the fully-fledged Australian crime novel with local settings and reference points and with a series character firmly entrenched in Australian culture—Cliff Hardy.

His non-fiction works include Fred Hollows: An Autobiography (with Fred Hollows), Sweet and Sour: A Diabetic Life and Lords of the Ring: A Social History of Prize Fighting in Australia.

Corris hopes that his latest non-crime book, The Journal of Fletcher Christian, will find a wide audience and underline his credentials as an historical novelist. Inevitably, this thoroughly researched book will be seen as a circling back to his earlier career as a Pacific historian and a journalist with an interest in Pacific affairs but, as Corris has said: “There is no better training for a novelist than history and journalism.”

Peter Corris was born in Stawell, Victoria, in 1942 and was educated at Melbourne High School and the University of Melbourne. After taking a Master's degree at Monash University and a PhD at the Australian National University (both in history), he was an academic, teaching and researching in various universities and a college of advanced education until 1975, when he gave up academia for journalism. He was literary editor of The National Times in 1980-81. He has travelled and lived for short periods in the Pacific, Britain, Europe and the US. His interests are reading and writing, weight training, golf (which he plays off a very high handicap), walking the dog, swimming and films. He is married to writer Jean Bedford and they have three daughters. He lives on the Illawarra coast of NSW.

Sheryle Bagwell
Sheryle Bagwell is a Walkley Award-winning journalist, columnist and broadcaster with more than 15 years’ professional experience. She has worked for and contributed to high-profile media around the world including the Financial Times of London, BBC World Service Television, EuroNews Television and, in Australia, The Bulletin, the Melbourne Sunday Age and the Sydney Sun-Herald. Before moving to Europe in 1998, she was a senior writer, editor and columnist for The Australian Financial Review. She was posted to London in 1998 where she served as the newspaper's Europe correspondent until 2001.  In 2003, she and her husband moved from London to Lyon in France where she continued to work for a variety of media while her husband completed a three-year contract as head of communications for Interpol. In 2006, Sheryle completed a non-fiction book about France which was commissioned by the Australian publishers HarperCollins. Sheryle was made business editor of the ABC Radio National program “Breakfast with Fran Kelly” in February 2006. The couple now plan to divide their time between Australia and France. They currently live in Bondi Beach.

Susan Duncan
Born in country Victoria, Susan Duncan began her career in journalism as a cadet on a trade fashion magazine, then joined The Sun newspaper in Melbourne. During the following 25 years her career included positions in radio, newspapers and magazines. As editor of top-selling women’s magazines, she enjoyed a high-flying lifestyle that had her jetting around the world and rubbing shoulders with Hollywood celebrities. Susan’s name jumped into the best-seller lists in 2006 following the publication of Salvation Creek—An Unexpected Life, her very personal story of how, following devastating bereavements, she quit her glamorous job, left the rat race and found peace and happiness in Pittwater.

Nettie Lodge
Nettie Lodge is a painter, illustrator and writer. Her work is represented in public and private collections throughout Australia and overseas. She has been exhibiting in Sydney regularly for the past 15 years and has written and illustrated several children’s picture books. Her most recent book, Bird, published by ABC Books, received a Notable Book Award in the CBCA 2005 awards."My paintings have always had a narrative quality and illustrating books was a natural progression for my work,” Nettie says. “Words and pictures have an intrinsic relationship. Like humour and pathos, dancing and music, they connect in private and together they can create magic."

Brian Cook
Brian Cook, proprietor of Manuscript Appraisal Agency (MAA), has worked in publishing since 1969. He started in the industry as a salesperson, and has worked with Australian and international publishers in all areas of the business. His experience includes sales and marketing, managing and directing editorial units in the development of adult and children’s fiction and non-fiction lists, and buying and selling rights around the world. Brian understands the commercial world of corporate and small business publishing and the cooperative nature of the roles played by writer and publisher. He understands the pressures and restrictions placed on all parties involved, and publishers’ need to continue to find “new blood”. Brian left the corporate world of publishing in 1996 and set up MAA to offer a service to writers which affords them an insight into their work—from a publisher’s perspective. It is testimony to Brian’s profile in the industry that he was selected as a judge for the 2005 NSW Premier's Literary Awards.

Julia Collingwood
Julia Collingwood has worked in publishing since 1975. During that time she has been senior editor, acquisitions/commissioning editor, managing editor and publisher. She has worked for Currency Press, Allen & Unwin, Simon & Schuster and UNSW Press, among others. She has run her own editorial services company, and has taught editing and book production. She is also co-author of three books.