Australian Writers Mentoring Program

Dr Kathryn Heyman is the author of six novels, including The Accomplice and Captain Starlight’s Apprentice. Her seventh book, the memoir Fury, will be published in May 2021. She has won numerous awards including an Arts Council of England Writers Award, the Wingate and the Southern Arts Awards, and been nominated for the Orange Prize, the Scottish Writer of the Year Award, the Edinburgh Fringe Critics’ Awards, the Kibble Prize, and the West Australian Premier’s Book Awards.  She is the fiction program director for Faber Academy in Australia, served as the senior judge (chair) for all categories of the NSW Premier’s Awards, and is a member of the Folio Prize Academy. She is acknowledged as being particularly skilled at helping writers with structure. She is the Conjoint Professor in English and Humanities at the University of Newcastle, and holds the 2018 Copyright Agency Author Fellowship. Kathryn is available as a mentor through the Intensive or Custom programs. 

Hilary Bell is an award-winning playwright, lyricist and librettist. Her work, including plays such as Wolf Lullaby and Splinter, musicals, opera and song cycles have been produced nationally by Griffin, STC, Black Swan State Theatre Company, the Sydney Opera House, Arts Centre Melbourne, City Recital Hall, Deckchair, La Boite, State Theatre Company of South Australia, NORPA, Darlinghurst Theatre Company, National Theatre of Parramatta, the Ensemble, and Vitalstatistix; in the US by Atlantic and Steppenwolf; in the UK as part of the National Theatre’s Connections programme. Her radio plays have been commissioned and broadcast by the ABC, and she has written audio scripts for the Museum of Contemporary Art and the State Library of NSW. The recipient of awards including the Philip Parsons, Inscription, Jill Blewett, Aurealis, a Helpmann and two AWGIES, Hilary is also the co-creator of several picture books, among them the best-seller Alphabetical Sydney with illustrator Antonia Pesenti. She is a graduate of NIDA, AFTRS and New York’s Juilliard School, and was the Patrick White Fellow at the Sydney Theatre Company and the Tennessee Williams Fellow at the University of the South, Tennessee. She is a member of 7-On Playwrights.

Margo Lanagan has published more than twenty books for adults, young adults and children including the novels Tender Morsels and Sea Hearts.  She collaborated with Scott Westerfeld and Deborah Biancotti on the New York Times bestselling YA superheroes trilogy, Zeroes. 

Her work has won a slew of awards, including the World Fantasy Awards, the Aurealis and  Ditmar Awards, the Victorian and Western Australian Premier’s Literary Award. Her work has also been listed for numerous prizes, including the Stella Prize, the Dublin IMPAC Award, the Astrid Lindgren Award, the Carnegie Medal and many others. Her books and stories have been translated into 19 languages.

Margo has been an instructor at six residential Clarion workshops, in Brisbane, Seattle and San Diego. She has also conducted numerous creative writing workshops both for school groups and for adult writers.

Nick Earls is the author of twenty-six books for adults, teenagers and children. His books have won awards in Australia, the UK and US, and also appeared on bestseller lists in those countries. Two of his novels have been adapted into feature films – 48 Shades of Brown into 48 Shades (distributed by Disney’s Buena Vista) and the Italian edition of Perfect Skin into Solo un Padre (Warner Brothers/Cattleya). Five of his novels have been adapted into stage plays, with the Zigzag Street play touring to thirty-six cities and towns around Australia in 2005. His articles and op-ed pieces have appeared in publications such as the New York Times, the Guardian, the Sydney Morning Herald and the Australian. His short fiction has been published in journals and anthologies in Australia, the US and UK. His most recent project is the novella series Wisdom Tree, which also formed the basis of his University of Queensland PhD thesis, along with an essay on the impact of technology on twenty-first century novella publishing. Wisdom Tree has won several awards in Australia and the US, including a NSW Premier’s Literary Award and a gold medal at the Independent Publisher Book Awards (USA).

Jaclyn Moriarty is the author of several novels for young adults (and one for adults), including the internationally best-selling Feeling Sorry for Celia and Finding Cassie Crazy, and, most recently, the Colours of Madeleine trilogy. The first book in that trilogy, A Corner of White, won the NSW Premier’s Literary Award for Young Adult fiction, the Queensland Literary Award for Young Adult Fiction, and was shortlisted for the Western Australian Premier’s Awards. In the US, it was a Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor book, was shortlisted for the Nebula (Andre Norton prize), and was a Kirkus Best Book of the Year. The second in the trilogy also won both the NSW and Queensland Literary Awards, was shortlisted for the Victorian Premier’s Awards, and won the Aurealis Award for Best Young Adult Fantasy. A former media and entertainment lawyer, Jaclyn has a Masters in Law from Yale and a PhD from Cambridge.

Malcolm Knox is the author of 21 books of fiction and non-fiction. He has published six novels: Summerland, A Private Man, Jamaica, The Endangered List (as ‘Brian Westlake’), The Life and The Wonder Lover. His novels have won prizes for crime fiction (A Private Man), first fiction (Summerland) and the Colin Roderick Prize for best Australian book of the year (Jamaica), as well as being shortlisted for major awards in Australia and overseas. His books have been published in the USA and the UK and also translated into French, Spanish, Italian, German, Dutch and Slovakian. As a journalist, he has won two Walkley Awards and a Human Rights Commission Award and been runner-up for Australian journalist of the year. He has also ghost-written 15 memoirs with diverse authors including Bart Cummings, Adam Gilchrist, Greg Chappell, Michael Clarke, Ben Cousins, Peter Greste and Victoria Cross winner Mark Donaldson.

Dr Stephanie Dowrick is one of Australia’s most successful writers and has been actively involved with writing, editing and publishing for many years. She has written for children and also 16 books for adults, both fiction and non-fiction. Five have been international No.1 bestsellers. Perhaps best known are Forgiveness and Other Acts of Love, Intimacy and Solitude, and Seeking the Sacred. She came to writing after a celebrated publishing career, including founding the London feminist publishing house, The Women’s Press, where she published many celebrated writers including Alice Walker, Michele Roberts, Janet Frame and Susan Griffin. She worked as Allen & Unwin’s Fiction Publisher in the early 1990s where she again published household name writers and helped launch some illustrious careers. Stephanie has always combined her own writing projects with teaching and journalism, and has also contributed to major media outlets including the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, and as regular guest on the ABC. Stephanie regards writing as “a privileged voyage of discovery” and is a passionate advocate of the rewards possible for every genuinely committed writer

Ross Grayson Bell is a screenwriter, producer and story consultant with over twenty-five years of international experience in story development. Having worked his way up from a creative executive for legendary Hollywood producer Ray Stark, Ross developed and produced Fight Club for Twentieth Century Fox. He created his own production company in 1993 and formed producing partnerships with Winona Ryder, Jamie Foxx and Lawrence Bender.

In 2009 Ross took up the position of Head of Screenwriting at the Australian Film, Television and Radio School where he guided five students to Australian Writers’ Guild Award nominations for the TV pilots they developed as part of their course work, with one student winning for her pilot in 2013.

Ross is currently serving his third year as Senior Judge of the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards. He also currently works as an external script assessor for Screen Australia, and lectures on story, both in Australia and Malaysia.

James Bradley is a writer and critic. His books include the novels, Clade, Wrack, The Deep Field and The Resurrectionist, a book of poetry, Paper Nautilus, and as editor, The Penguin Book of the Ocean. In addition to being widely translated, James’ novels have won or been shortlisted for a number of awards, including The Age Fiction Book of the Year Award, the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction and the Miles Franklin Award. As well as writing fiction and poetry, The Resurrectionist was an international bestseller and selected in the UK as a ‘Richard and Judy Summer Read’. James’ reviews and essays have appeared in newspapers and magazines such as The Times Literary Supplement, The Australian Literary Review, The Guardian, The Monthly, The New York Review of Science Fiction, Griffith Review, Meanjin, Heat and The Sydney Morning Herald.  He was the recipient of the 2012 Pascall Prize for the Australian Critic of the Year and is a Course Director for Faber Academy at Allen & Unwin.

Mark Tredinnick, winner of the Montreal Poetry Prize (2011) and the Cardiff Poetry Prize (2012), is the author of The Blue Plateau, Fire Diary, and nine other acclaimed works of poetry and prose. As well as The Blue Plateau: A Landscape Memoir (which won the Queensland Premier’s Literary Award and was shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s Literary Award) and Fire Diary (winner of the WA Premier’s Book Prize), other works include The Little Green Grammar Book, The Little Red Writing Book (published outside Australia as Writing Well: the Essential Guide), The Land’s Wild Music, The Little Black Book of Business Writing, The Lyrebird (poems), and most recently Australia’s Wild Weather. He has judged the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards and taught many emerging writers.

Dr Kate Forsyth is an award-winning poet, novelist, journalist and storyteller. Her historical novels for adults include The Blue Rose, Beauty in Thorns, The Wild Girl and Bitter Greens, which won the 2015 American Library Association Award for Best Historical Fiction. Non-fiction books include Searching for Charlotte: The Fascinating Story of Australia’s First Children’s Author, written with the assistance of the Nancy Keesing Fellowship and longlisted for the 2021 Indie Book Awards, and The Rebirth of Rapunzel: A Mythic Biography of the Maiden in the Tower which won the 2017 William Atheling Jr Award for Criticism. Her books for children include Vasilisa the Wise & Other Tales of Brave Young Women, which won a silver medal in the 2018 US Readers Favorite book awards; The Impossible Quest, shortlisted for a KOALA and a YABBA Award; and the Aurealis-award winning historical adventure series The Chain of Charms. Kate has also written for many newspapers and magazines, including Womankind, Good Weekend, Spectrum, The Conversation, Griffith Review, Text Magazine, Meanjin, The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald, and Good Reading. Kate has a BA in literature, a MA in creative writing and a Doctorate of Creative Arts, and is an accredited master storyteller with the Australian Guild of Storytellers. Her work has been translated into twenty languages.

Toni Jordan is the author of five novels. The international best-seller Addition (2008), was a Richard and Judy Bookclub pick and was longlisted for the Miles Franklin award. Fall Girl (2010) was published internationally and has been optioned for film, and Nine Days was awarded Best Fiction at the 2012 Indie Awards, was shortlisted for the ABIA Best General Fiction award, and was named in Kirkus Review’s top 10 Historical Novels of 2013. Our Tiny Useless Hearts (2016) was shortlisted for the 2017 Voss Literary Prize. Her latest novel is The Fragments (2018). Toni has been widely published in newspapers and magazines and teaches creative writing at Faber Academy at Allen & Unwin.

Ashley Hay’s work has been praised for its “intelligent scrutiny of the human psyche”, “a tenderness that is deeply compelling” and its “simple grace”. Her novels have received numerous prize nominations and have been published internationally.

In a previous and more journalistic life, Ashley worked as both an editor and writer, and she was literary editor for The Bulletin for several years. As an essayist, journalist and reviewer, her own words have appeared in a range of publications in Australia and beyond, and have been included in Best Australian Essays, Best Australian Short Stories and Best Australian Science Writing – the 2014 anthology of which she also edited. In 2016 she won the Bragg/UNSW Press Prize for Science Writing.

She has lectured and taught workshops and masterclasses in fiction, narrative non-fiction and a range of writing processes for more than a decade for writers’ centres, writers’ festivals, universities and the MEAA.

David Roach is a screenwriter, producer, director, script editor and story consultant. He has been making feature films and non-fiction films for over 30 years. He wrote and co-produced the multi-award winning feature Beneath Hill 6, described by one critic as "one of the greatest Australian films ever made”. Awards include Best Screenplay, Best Film and Best Director. David directed the feature documentary Red Obsession for Village Roadshow. Narrated by Russel Crowe, it received many awards including Best Direction and Best Feature Documentary and Best Screenplay. David wrote and co-produced the critically acclaimed ABC/BBC documentary Singer, A Dangerous Mind about controversial philosopher, Peter Singer. He was script/story consultant on Drift, a feature starring Sam Worthington. Past projects include Young Einstein for Warner Brothers, still listed as one of the twenty most successful Australian features of all time. His current projects include The Rhino Project, a feature film set in Kenya and South Africa for Third Man Films. He is also producing a podcast on biography, Caroline Baum’s Life Sentences. As well as making movies David has lectured and run workshops and masterclasses at festivals and universities across the country.

Carrie Tiffany was born in West Yorkshire and grew up in Western Australia. She spent her early twenties working as a park ranger in Central Australia and now lives in Melbourne. Her first novels include Everyman’s Rules for Scientific Living, which was published in the UK, US, Germany, the Netherlands and Australia. In 2006 it was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award, the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award, the Orange Prize for Fiction, the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize and the Guardian First Book Award, and was the winner of the Western Australian Premier’s Fiction Prize and the Dobbie Award. Other novels include Mateship with Birds which was published in 2012. It was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction (UK) and shortlisted for the Encore Prize (UK), Miles Franklin Literary Award, the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award, the Prime Minister’s Prize for Fiction, The Melbourne Prize for Fiction and the Kibble Award. In 2013 Mateship with Birds was the winner of the ChristinaX Stead Prize for Fiction and the inaugural Stella Prize. Her latest novel, Exploded View, was published in early 2019. Carrie has an MA in Creative Writing from RMIT University and is completing her PhD at Deakin University. Her essays and short stories have been published widely. She has won the Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize and was shortlisted for the BBC International Short Story Prize (UK). Carrie has taught at the Banff Centre for the Creative Arts in Canada, the University of Melbourne, RMIT University, Latrobe University and Writer’s Victoria. She is a former director of Faber Academy in Melbourne where she taught the Writing a Novel course.

Dr Jacqueline Kent has published fourteen books including fiction for young adults, social history and biography, and has received multiple grants from the Australia Council.

As a book editor she has worked across all genres for Australia’s major publishers, most recently concentrating on non-fiction, especially biography. In 1994 she was awarded the Australia Council’s Beatrice Davis Fellowship to study publishing in New York. She has several times been a mentor for young editors in the Australia Council/Publishers’ Association Residential Editorial Program as well as a mentor with the Australian Society of Authors. She has written and presented courses in writing, editing and research at several writers’ centres and at Sydney’s Macleay College.
 

Alison Croggon is an award-winning novelist, poet, librettist and critic. She has published eight collections of poetry and several novels, including the acclaimed fantasy quintet The Books of Pellinor. She won the Dame Mary Gilmore and Anne Elder Awards for poetry and the Wilderness Society’s 2016 Environment Award for Children’s Literature for The River and the Book. As well, her poetry collections and novels have been shortlisted for the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award, the NSW Premier’s Literary Award, the WA Premier’s Literary Award, and her most recent fantasy novel The Bone Queen was shortlisted for YA Book of the Year in the 2017 Aurealis Awards.

She has 30 years experience reviewing performance for outlets such as the Australian, the ABC and The Monthly and generated an international reputation as a performance critic with her influential blog Theatre Notes, and is a co-editor and founder of Witness Performance. In 2009 she was the first online critic to win the prestigious Geraldine Pascall Critic of the Year Award.