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Chris Gill
Chris was born in Eastbourne in the UK to a British mother and New Zealander father. He moved to New Zealand with his family at age two where he spent over six years growing up in Auckland. It was during this time that Chris' love for reading and writing began, spending his early years penning hundreds of short stories his mother still has tucked away.
Upon returning to the UK, Chris lived in a small town in Sussex. These years went on to inspire many of the themes in his novels, such as coming of age, small-town homophobia and isolation. Chris moved to Hampshire at age nineteen to study journalism at university.
Upon graduating, Chris moved to London and began a career in copywriting. In 2011, he published his debut book of poetry through his co-founded publishing company, PRNTD.
Chris relocated to Australia in 2014 and released his LGBTQ+ coming-of-age novel The Nowhere in 2019. His New Zealand mystery novel Boy Fallen is coming out 22 March 2022.
Chris lives in Sydney with his husband.
L.E. Luttrell
L.E. Luttrell was born in Sydney, Australia and spent the first twenty-one years of her life there before moving to the UK. After working in publishing (in the UK) for a few years she went on to study and trained as a teacher. Since the nineties, she spent many years working in secondary education, although she's also had numerous other part-time jobs. A frustrated architect/builder, L.E. Luttrell has spent much of her adult life moving house and wielding various tools while renovating properties.
Russel Hutchings
Born in Perth, Western Australia, Russel Hutchings is a former SAS Warrant Officer with over 20 years' service in the Regiment.
Russel has operated in many of the world's troubled areas and most recently performed the role as a military adviser and provided other information collection services to a US-based company operating in Afghanistan.
He draws on decades of experience in the SAS and within the intelligence collection sphere to write the MANTRA-6 series with the utmost of authenticity and credibility. Russel is now retired and concentrating on a writing career in the genre of Thriller, SAS and fast-paced Espionage novels.
Caroline Graham
Caroline Graham has worked as a newspaper reporter and magazine writer, and now teaches journalism at Bond University on the Gold Coast.
Kylie Stevenson
Kylie Stevenson has 17 years' experience as a journalist, her work appearing in newspapers, magazines and websites all over the country.
Sally Scott
Sally Scott wrote her first novel as an 11-year-old. It was a Famous Five pastiche and every word was precious. She kept writing cosies until an arts degree led to experimentation with short stories, none of them publishable, but joyous to write. Then 'adulting' happened and creative writing gave way to a career in academia, jobs as a weapons systems contractor and her own business development consultancy. Fromage is the first novel in the Alex Grant series. Sally is currently working on the second book, Oranges and Lemons.
Jess Kitching
Jess Kitching is an avid reader, writer and binge-watcher. Originally from Bradford, England, she currently lives in Sydney with her fiancé Jack. Her two goals in life were to move to Australia and have a book published. To be able to say she has done both is something she still can't wrap her head around.
Kyle Perry is a counsellor who has worked extensively in high schools, youth shelters and drug rehabs. In his work he encounters stories and journeys that would fill a hundred books. Kyle's mother grew up in the foothills of the Great Western Tiers, in Tasmania's heartland, where his grandfather was called on for search and rescues in the mountains. Kyle himself has been lost in Tasmanian mountains twice, and once used ripped pages of a journal stuck on branches to find his way back out. He has also seen strange things in the bush that defy explanation and are best not spoken about. Kyle divides his time between his small country hometown in Tasmania's North West and Hobart.
Karen Herbert
Karen Herbert spent her childhood in Geraldton on the midwest coast of Australia, attending local schools before moving to Perth to study at the University of Western Australia where she attained a Bachelor of Commerce with First Class Honours. She also holds a Master of Science in Applied Psychology. Karen has worked in aged care, disability services, higher education, Indigenous land management, social housing and the public sector, and is a graduate member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors. She is a Board Member of The Intelife Group, a Board Observer at Advocare, and President of the Fellowship of Australian Writers (WA). Karen lives in Perth, Western Australia with her husband, Ross, and the occasional fledgling.
Lisa Ellery
Lisa Ellery was born in 1975 and raised on a farm near Esperance on Western Australia's south coast. She studied law and arts at the University of Western Australia before returning to regional WA in 1998 to commence her career as a lawyer in the goldmining city of Kalgoorlie-Boulder. She soon fell in love with Kal and its people, and in 2008 she started her own law firm there. She works predominantly in commercial and mining law and employs a dozen staff in her busy Hannan Street practice. Lisa is married to Simon Ellery, a geologist. She divides her time between running her law firm, running in the Goldfields bush and writing.
Peter Papathanasiou
Peter Papathanasiou is the son of migrants and grandson of refugees. His parents emigrated from Greece to Australia. A research geneticist, he has worked in the US, UK and Australia. His passion, however, is writing, and he has a Master of Arts in Creative Writing from The University of London.
Dr Michael Levitt MB BS (UWA), FRACS trained as a surgeon in Western Australia before pursuing subspecialty training in colorectal surgery at London's St Mark's and Royal Free hospitals. Since 1990 he has worked in WA as a specialist colorectal surgeon.
Michael Burge
Michael Burge is an Australian author, artist and journalist who lives at Deepwater in the New England region of NSW with his husband and their dogs.
Eddie Russel
Eddie Russell has a degree in English literature and Masters in Creative writing. Born and raised in the then English colony of East Africa to English parents, he immigrated to Australia to complete his schooling before moving to San Diego to work in technology. He is now settled back in Australia with his life partner and following his passion to write.
Garry Linnell
Garry Linnell is one of Australia's most experienced journalists. Born and raised in Geelong, he has won several awards for his writing, including a Walkley for best feature writing.
Laraine Stephens
After nearly forty years of working as a teacher-librarian and Head of Library, Laraine Stephens decided to experience life on the other side of the bookshelves and became a writer of historical crime fiction.
Simon Rowell
Pseudonym Of
S.D. Rowell
S.D. Rowell is an Australian crime mystery author, born in Adelaide, South Australia. A graduate of both the University of South Australia and Flinders University, the author is interested in the interplay between culture, morality and truth, which is explored within the novel, "The Echo of Others".
Bryan Brown
Iconic Australian actor Bryan Brown became an international success in the early eighties with critical acclaim from performances in Breaker Morant and the TV series A Town Like Alice.
Ruth McIver
Ruth McIver recently completed her PhD in the field of true crime inspired fiction with Curtin University. Her first novel, Nothing Gold, was runner up in the inaugural Banjo Prize (2018) and was one of seven novels selected to be pitched at Bloody Scotland Crime Writing Festival (2014). Ruth's novel-in-verse, The Sunset Club (2014), is a DIY publication that was highly commended in the Anne Elder category by the FAW (Fellowship of Australian Writers). I Shot the Devil won the 2018 Richell Prize for Emerging Writers.
Margaret Hickey is an award-winning author and playwright from North East Victoria. She has a PhD in Creative Writing and is deeply interested in rural lives and communities.
Jake Avila
Jake Avila is a full-time writer with a BA in Writing and Information Technology. He has a background in freelance journalism writing on politics, culture, technology and sport, and taught secondary English for 10 years.
Alan Leek
Alan Leek joined the NSW police force as a cadet in 1965. As a detective, he rose through the ranks to command positions in some of the most challenging areas in the State, including the tough Blacktown and Cabramatta patrols, the latter then the centre of heroin trafficking in Australia.
John Byron grew up in Sydney where he went to medical school for a time before leaving in the interest of public safety. He has worked as a barman, a factory hand, a help desk operator and a federal political adviser. He now lives in Melbourne and works in the university sector.
Melissa Lucashenko
Melissa Lucashenko is an Australian writer of European and Goorie heritage. She received an honours degree in public policy from Griffith University in 1990.
Richard Evans was born in Williamstown, in Australia. His eclectic career included service as a national industry leader, corporate senior executive, business owner, semi pro-footballer, actor, and media commentator. He was elected to the Commonwealth Parliament of Australia during unprecedented times in the 1990s, giving his books added authenticity. There's a political story everywhere. As a political insider, Richard recognises the tribalism, the warped egos, the ruthless power, and the lonely insecure life of a politician, therefore writing thrilling character-driven stories about this exotic, mysterious world. He is presently writing three series. The Democracy Trilogy provides insight into the ruthless nature of politics and the politicians doing whatever it takes to get what they want. The Referendum Series examines the social dilemmas within a community with the government seeking to hear from the population via referendum. Contemporary issues are examined, such as First Nation rights in Forgotten People, euthanasia in Kill Bill, and water rights in The Mallee. Jack Hudson MP is a 10 book series beginning with Horrible People and follows the power struggles and personal challenges of a novice member of parliament's career seeking to reach the ultimate leadership role of Prime Minister. Richard lives above a pub, opposite a church with his wife in the small bayside village of Williamstown, overlooking Melbourne, Australia.
Matt Nable
MATT NABLE is a novelist, scriptwriter and actor. He wrote and starred in The Final Winter (2007), an independent Australian film that has been released internationally, and is currently appearing in cinemas in The Dry alongside Eric Bana. He has appeared on-screen alongside Vin Diesel, Clive Owen, Guy Pearce and Robert De Niro. With his wife and three children, Matt divides his time between Sydney and Los Angeles.
Nicola West
Nicola West is the daughter of a third-generation police officer and grew up in a bucolic coastal town in New South Wales. After moving to Sydney to pursue a career in journalism, she vowed to be as far removed from both her hometown and her father's profession as possible—that is until she found herself writing a novel about both topics.
Linda Brucesmith
Sarah Jane Justice
Danielle Birch
Karen Bayly
A.W. Hammond
A.W. Hammond was born in South Africa and emigrated to Australia as a child. He currently works at RMIT University and lives in Melbourne with his wife and daughters.
Lyn Yeowart
Lyn Yeowart is a professional writer and editor with more than 25 years of experience in writing and editing everything from captions for artworks to speeches for executives.
Yeowart, Lyn
Jack Beaumont
Fleur McDonald
After growing up on a farm near Orroroo in South Australia, Fleur McDonald's first job was jillarooing in the outback. She has been involved in agriculture all her life, including helping manage a 8000-acre station for twenty years. Today she and her two children, along with a Jack Russell and her energetic kelpie, Jack, live in Esperance, Western Australia,
Kay Bell
Loraine Peck
Neil Mercer
Ruby Jones
Debra Oswald
Debra Oswald is a Sydney-based playwright and author. She began writing as a teenager and sold her first radioplay at 17. Since then, she's made her living as a writer for film, television, stage, and radio, as well as publishing a number of novels for children.
Rebecca Starford
Lee Christine
Polly Phillips
Polly is originally from South West London but after visiting Australia in 2011, she fell head over heels for the lifestyle, even though she doesn't drink coffee and rarely goes to the beach! Polly currently lives in Perth with her husband, daughter and much-loved dog.
Harry Colfer
Harry Colfer is the pseudonym of an experienced paramedic who lives and works in Brisbane, Australia. Although his stories are totally fictional, his writing style is very realistic and he maintains a healthy level of paranoia with respect to his anonymity. He would love to tell you more about himself, and some day will, but at the moment he considers that revealing his true identity could be a career-limiting move.
To date he has published twenty short stories in the Ambo Tales From the Frontline series and plans to write another twelve, one for each of the thirty-two AMPDS codes, the system used worldwide to categorise emergency calls.
Seth Robinson
Seth Robinson is an American-Australian author based in Melbourne. He was born in Seattle in 1991, the same year as Nirvana released Nevermind, and now that he lives in Melbourne, has traded in one rainy city for another. While he and his family left the US when he was four years old, Seth retains his American twang and love of pine trees, something that contributed to the setting of his debut novel, Welcome to Bellevue.
Alexander Thorpe is from Fremantle, Western Australia. He has written advertising copy for pool cleaners and concrete supply companies, taught English in Joseph Stalin's hometown and almost managed to read half of James Joyce's Ulysses twice (which is more or less the same as having almost managed to read the whole book). Alex has written for news outlets, travel journals, marketing companies and educational providers, and has recently completed his first novel, Death Leaves the Station.
Greg Woodland
S.R. White
S.R. White worked for a UK police force for twelve years, before returning to academic life and taking an MA in Creative Writing at Nottingham Trent University. He now lives in Queensland, Australia.
Paulene Turner
Duncan Richardson
Mike Adamson
Phillipa Nefri Clark
Phillipa grew up around lonely Australian beaches with wild seas and misty cliffs. From a young age she wrote stories and dreamed of being a writer. There were many detours along the way as she trod paths as diverse as a travelling sales rep to singing and acting.
Fascinated by film, Phillipa wrote five feature length screenplays, one which was optioned. Now living in regional Victoria on a small acreage close to a mountain range, she markets the family business a few days a week and writes the rest of the time.
Donna Mazza
Heidi Lemon
Natasha Molt
Dr Natasha Molt is a criminal policy lawyer and thriller writer. She is currently the Director of Policy at the Law Council of Australia, specialising in Criminal and National Security Law. Prior to this she worked as a legal officer for the Australian Government. She has published crime fiction reviews for The Canberra Times and her short stories have been shortlisted twice for the Annual Scarlet Stiletto Award. In 2007 she was awarded a Varuna Longlines Mentorship for her first unpublished thriller manuscript. Recently, Natasha completed her PhD in creative writing, which forms the basis of her debut novel, Cutting the Cord.
Katherine Firkin is a Melbourne journalist, currently with CBS New York.
She has over a decade of experience and has worked across every medium – print, online, television and radio.
Katherine began her career at the Herald Sun newspaper (News Corp), where she specialised in sports reporting (winning an AFL Media award in 2008), before moving to breaking news, including crime and court reporting. During this time, she covered some of Victoria's most notorious criminal affairs, including the death and funeral of underworld figure Carl Williams.
She has also worked for Seven West Media (7 News, 7 Sport), 3AW Radio, the Nine Network's Today show, and Network Ten, and has been a regular international correspondent for multiple global outlets.
Katherine has been writing fiction from a young age, and she studied literature and journalism at university. Her debut novel is inspired by the many criminal trials she has covered.
Leah Swann
Anna Downes
ANNA DOWNES was born and raised in Sheffield, UK, but now lives just north of Sydney, Australia with her husband and two children. She worked as an actress before turning her attention to writing. She was shortlisted for the Sydney Writers Room Short Story Prize (2017) and longlisted for the Margaret River Short Story Competition (2018).
Kirsty Manning
Kirsty Manning grew up in northern New South Wales. She has degrees in literature and communications and worked as an editor and publishing manager in book publishing for over a decade. A country girl with wanderlust, her travels and studies have taken her through most of Europe, the east and west coasts of the United States and pockets of Asia. Kirsty's journalism and photography specialising in lifestyle and travel regularly appear in magazines, newspapers and online.
Annette Marner
Dr Annette Marner is an award-winning poet, novelist, fine art nature photographer and ABC radio broadcaster from South Australia's Southern Flinders Ranges. In 2018, she won the Arts South Australia Wakefield Press Unpublished Manuscript Award at the Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature for A New Name for the Colour Blue. Her first book, Women with Their Faces on Fire, won the Unpublished Manuscript Award for Poetry for Friendly Street/Wakefield Press and was on the reading list at Flinders University.
Since launching her fine art nature photography in 2017, Annette has exhibited her work in galleries including solo exhibitions and had her images published internationally. Annette is an Associate Member of the Royal South Australian Society for Arts (qualifying in 2019 for her photography) and has a PhD in creative writing from Flinders University.
Carmel Reilly
Carmel Reilly writes for children and adults. She has worked as an educational writer for almost two decades and is the author of more than 300 titles of fiction and non-fiction for children and young teens. In 2011 she won the Partners in Crime Short Story award and in 2016 she was awarded a Varuna Residental Fellowship to develop her first novel, Life Before. Born in New Zealand, she now lives in Melbourne, Australia.
S.J. Morgan
S.J. Morgan has been writing for many years and, in addition to short stories and articles, has written several novels.
She grew up in England but has spent most of her adult life overseas. Trained as an Occupational Therapist, she lived in New Zealand for ten years before settling in South Australia. She has won prizes for short fiction and was awarded a mentorship from the Australian Society of Authors for her children's writing.
S.J. Morgan currently lives in the Adelaide Hills with her partner, her daughters and two slovenly greyhounds.
Julian Leatherdale
Julian Leatherdale's first love was the theatre. On graduation from a theatre studies degree at the University of NSW, he wrote lyrics for four satirical cabarets and a two-act musical. He discovered a passion for popular history as a staff writer, researcher and photo editor for Time-Life's Australians At War series. He later researched and co-wrote two Film Australia-ABC documentaries Return to Sandakan and The Forgotten Force shown on the ABC and overseas. He was an image researcher at the State Library of NSW before joining the NSW Cabinet Office writing policy briefs for the Premier. For some years he was the public relations manager for an international hotel school in the Blue Mountains where he lives with his wife and two children.
Stephen Kinnane
Stephen Kinnane is a Marda Marda from Mirriwoong country in the East Kimberley. He has been an active writer and researcher for more than 25 years as well as lecturing and working on community cultural heritage, curatorial and development projects. Kinnane co-wrote and produced The Coolbaroo Club(1996), an ABC TV documentary awarded the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission Human Rights Award for the Arts, and collaborated with Lauren Marsh and Alice Nannup on When the Pelican Laughed (1992), the story of Mrs Alice Nannup (Fremantle Press).
Karina Kilmore
Karina Kilmore is an author, finance writer, mum and lifesaving volunteer. Where The Truth Lies, her fiction debut, will go on sale in March 2020. Where The Truth Lies is a fast-paced suspense story set against the gritty backdrop of Melbourne's inner-city streets and industrial waterfront.
Sherryl Clark
Some of my first short stories were crime fiction, and although in the last 20 years I have focused a lot more on writing children's and YA books, I've kept going with my crime writing. The first two novels are now stowed somewhere in the back of my filing cabinet!
But "Trust Me, I'm Dead", first draft written in 2009, is to be published by Verve Books in the UK. What a journey with that novel. I love the character, a grumpy woman (secretly modelled on a young Judi Dench), and couldn't let go of the story. Nine drafts later ...
Janet Roger
Janet Roger was apprehended for the first time at age three, on the lam from a strange new part of town. The desk sergeant looked stern, but found her a candy bar in his pocket anyway. Big mistake. He should have taken away her shoelaces. She's been on the run ever since.
Lucie Morris-Marr
British-born investigative journalist, writer and broadcaster Lucie Morris-Marr was twice highly commended as Young Journalist of the Year at the British Press Awards while working on domestic and international assignments for the Daily Mail in London. In 2006 she moved to Sydney as Associate Editor of Marie Claire where she focused on long form investigative journalism. She went on to work as a senior writer for the Herald Sun in Melbourne where she became the first reporter in the world to uncover a secret police investigation into Cardinal George Pell regarding child sexual abuse allegations. The author covered the subsequent legal case for The New Daily and CNN.
Chrissie Foster
Peter Fox
Former Detective Chief Inspector Peter Fox is a hero in many people's eyes. A police officer with 36 years' service in the Hunter region, he rose to national prominence in 2012 for his major role in speaking out for the victims of abuse within the church. He had been at the coalface fighting these heinous crimes for decades. He had worked with the victims and supported their families. He knew an enquiry was long overdue. His decision to become a whistle blower helped trigger Prime Minister Julia Gillard's historic decision to establish a far-reaching Royal Commission into the sexual abuse of children in institutions.
Jeannie Lockett
Born Jane Beattie (NSW birth registration #702/1847 V1847702 550). She married Thomas Lockett in 1868 (#3527/1868). She possibly worked in Narrandera as a primary school teacher, 1880-circa 1888. She died in Sydney in 1890 (NSW death registration #1669/1890).
Peter Seymour
Jason K. Foster
Jason Foster is an author, poet, journalist and History teacher at Jamison High School in Sydney's western suburbs. He holds a Masters Degree in History and is currently studying a Diploma in Languages (Spanish). He has taught in Australia, the United Kingdom, Spain and Argentina. He has been published in American History magazines, Australian travel magazines and poetry anthologies in the United Kingdom. Seven Bones is his first major true crime novel.
Sarah cast off the lines to her law career not long after being awarded Australian Corporate Lawyer of the Year in 2016. She now lives with her husband aboard a 43-foot sailing catamaran, exploring this most magnificent blue planet and chasing an endless summer. She took up writing novels as a way to liberate her imagination after twenty years in the structured confines of legal and corporate life. Her debut novel, Lapse, is the first of a series featuring former corporate lawyer Clementine Jones.
Ben Hobson lives in Brisbane and is entirely keen on his wife, Lena, and their two small boys, Charlie and Henry. He also has a superb pooch named Lincoln, which Charlie forced him to write about in his biography. He currently teaches English and Music at a Queensland High School, and has a keen interest in philosophy, theology, writing and reading.
Born in Gippsland, Victoria, Ben grew up surrounded by the sights and smells of the country. His early interest in creativity saw him pursue music both academically and artistically, graduating from QUT in 2011 with a degree, and travelling the country with Sounds Like Chicken, a ska/rock/hardcore hybrid.
Tim Ayliffe
Tim Ayliffe has been a journalist for almost 20 years and is the Managing Editor of Television and Video for ABC News. He has also worked as TV News Editor for ABC News and the Executive Producer of ABC News Breakfast.
Felicity McLean
R.W.R. McDonald
R.W.R. McDonald is a Kiwi living in Melbourne with his two daughters and an extended rainbow family including HarryCat and Stevie Nicks the chicken.
Kirsten Alexander
Gregory James is a former detective who – while waiting for his real life to begin (cue: Colin Hay) – took up writing to turn real life stories and concepts into fiction.
Jake Lynch
Jake Lynch is Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Sydney, and the author of seven books and over 50 refereed articles and book chapters. Over 20 years, he has pioneered both research and practice in the field of Peace Journalism, for which he was recognised with the 2017 Luxembourg Peace Prize, awarded by the Schengen Peace Foundation.
Jay Darby
Jay is an Australian author, and creator of Dan Porter in the original crime thriller, BIG WHITE LIES. He's a keen traveller, amateur photographer, and a bit of a sports tragic. He believes in writing what you know...
Sarah Barrie
B.M. Allsopp
I grew up in suburban Sydney, on the edge of the South Pacific Ocean. Armed with an Arts degree and eager for exotic adventure, I signed on to teach in Papua New Guinea (PNG) for two years. The Papuan children in my first primary class won my heart and that fabulous land became an absorbing interest.
Sarah Krasnostein
Clementine Ford
Clementine Ford is a freelance writer, broadcaster and public speaker based in Melbourne. She writes on feminism, pop culture and social issues.
Karen Viggers
Karen Viggers was born in Melbourne, Australia, and grew up in the Dandenong Ranges riding horses and writing stories. She studied Veterinary Science at Melbourne University, and then worked in mixed animal practice for seven years before completing a PhD at the Australian National University, Canberra, in wildlife health from which she published numerous scientific papers.
Kate Wild
Kirsty Ferguson
Kirsty Ferguson is a crime and mystery writer who lives in Melbourne, Australia. She has been writing stories ever since a life-changing brush with Stephen King's Cujo. When she's not writing about unspeakable things, reading or cooking, she can be found spending time with her son, teaching him about the joys of reading and writing.
J.P. Pomare
J.P. Pomare is an award-winning writer who has had work published in journals including Meanjin, Kill Your Darlings, Takahe and Mascara Literary Review. He has hosted the On Writing podcast since 2015 featuring bestselling authors from around the globe. He was born in New Zealand and resides in Melbourne with his wife.
Michael McGuire
Michael McGuire has worked as a journalist in Sydney and Adelaide for The Australian, The Sunday Mail and The Advertiser, with a couple of forays into the state and federal politics as an advisor.
Freda Marnie Nicholls
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Leigh Sales
Brian Castro
Elizabeth Jolly
JB Rowley
John Clanchy
Holly Throsby
Holly Throsby is a songwriters, musician and novelist from Sydney, Australia. She has released five solo albums, a collection of original children's songs, an album as part of the band, Seeker Lover Keeper, and has been nominated for four ARIAs.
Terry Smyth
Terry Smyth is an award-winning journalist, playwright, scriptwriter and songwriter. The youngest son of Irish immigrants, he was born and raised in the Hunter Valley, and is now based in Sydney. He has, in his time, worked as a builder's labourer, steel worker, cotton mill hand, psychiatric nurse, professional musician, actor and advertising copywriter.
Shankari Chandran
Shankari Chandran is a dystopic thriller writer and a lawyer. Shankari worked in the social justice field for a decade in London. She was responsible for projects in over 30 countries ranging from ensuring representation for detainees in Guantanamo Bay to training lawyers in Rwanda to advising UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Her work helped her understand the role and limitations of international humanitarian law in conflicts. It also showed her what happens to society when governments subvert civil liberties. These issues form major themes in her writing.
Connell Nisbet
Connell Nisbet is a Sydney-based novelist with more than 15 years' experience as a writer and copy editor on some of Australia's most respected magazines. A Willing Executioner is his first novel. His second novel, The Ember Room, will be available in late 2018.
Maryrose Cuskelly
Maryrose Cuskelly is a freelance writer and editor.
Robert Jeffreys
Robert Jeffreys has worked as an actor, teacher, builder, labourer, cleaner, real estate agent, personal security agent and playwright of the professionally produced stage plays Cox Four, Covert, The Simple Truth and The Messenger. ABC Radio National featured his radio plays Covert, which received an AWGIE award, and Bodily Harm. He has also published a poetry anthology, Frame of Mind.
Ashley Kalagian Blunt
Ashley Kalagian Blunt has written for Griffith Review, McSweeney's and Right Now. Her travel memoir, The Pomegranate's Daughter, was awarded a 2015 Varuna Publisher Introduction Fellowship. She teaches writing and public speaking, and has lived and worked in Canada, Peru, Mexico and South Korea.
Yoni Bashan
Richard Anderson is a second generation farmer from northern New South Wales. He has been running a beef-cattle farm for twenty-five years, but has also worked as a miner and had a stint on the local council.
Sally Hepworth is the bestselling author of The Secrets of Midwives (2015), The Things We Keep (2016) and The Mother's Promise (2017), and The Family Next Door (Feb 2018). Sally's books have been labelled "enchanting" by The Herald Sun, "smart and engaging" by Publisher's Weekly, and New York Times bestselling authors Liane Moriarty and Emily Giffin have praised Sally's novels as "women's fiction at its finest" and "totally absorbing".
Kelly Rimmer
Kelly Rimmer is the USA Today bestselling women's fiction author of five novels, including Me Without You and The Secret Daughter. Her most recent release is Before I Let You Go. She lives in rural Australia with her husband, 2 children and fantastically naughty dogs, Sully and Basil. Her novels have been translated into more than 20 languages.
Michael Veitch
Michael Veitch spent much of his youth writing and performing in television sketch comedy programs, before freelancing as a columnist and arts reviewer for newspapers and magazines. For four years he presented Sunday Arts, the national arts show on ABC television, and produced two books indulging his life-long interest in the aircraft of the Second World War, Flak and Fly. He lives in Hobart, where he presents ABC radio.
Meg Keneally
Meg Keneally started her working life as a junior public affairs officer at the Australian Consulate-General in New York, before moving to Dublin to work as a sub-editor and freelance features writer. On returning to Australia, she joined the Daily Telegraph as a general news reporter, covering everything from courts to crime to animals' birthday parties at the zoo. She then joined Radio 2UE as a talkback radio producer.
Rosa Fedele
Australian author and artist Rosa Fedele, known for her portrait and figurative work, was born in Sydney and studied at the prestigious Julian Ashton Art School. A member of Portrait Artists Australia, Australia's largest industry association for professional portraitists, her work has been exhibited in NSW Parliament House and Parliament House Canberra, as well as numerous galleries and exhibitions in Australia and worldwide.
Meredith Burgmann
Nathan Goodman
M.R. Graham
Pamela Crane
Ashley C. Harris
Terry Keys
Pauline Creeden
Nick Thacker
N.D. Hill
Lee Hayton
Tina Glasneck
Roger Rogerson hasn't been a police officer for more than 20 years. Yet his name makes him the most well-known 'detective-sergeant' in Australia. He has been the subject of articles, appearances, profiles and books; portrayed in TV dramas; and recorded by covert listening devices at home for months. Rogerson took up his own pen in prison. Out, he walked the club and pub speaking circuit, where he found a ready audience for his tales of law and mayhem. He now writes for newspapers.
Lola Lowe
Lowe lives in Sydney and is currently working on Stripped Down, the sequel to Stuck Up. She is totally unable to relax, is slightly unhinged and likes baking cupcakes, especially ones that involve glitter.
Colin King
Colin King is a Bendigo writer and former policy consultant.
Steve P. Vincent
Steve P. Vincent lives with his wife in a pokey apartment in Melbourne's north-west, where he's forced to write on the couch in front of an obnoxiously large television. When he's not writing, Steve keeps food and flat whites on the table working for the man. He enjoys beer, whisky, sports and dreaming up ever more elaborate conspiracy theories to write about. He has a Bachelor of Arts (Hons) in Political Science and History. His honours thesis was on the topic of global terrorism. He has travelled extensively through Europe, the United States and Asia.
Jack Heath
Jack Heath is the pen name of a bestselling and award-winning author. His twenty action-packed novels have been translated into several languages and optioned for film and television.
Kate Kyriacou
Kate Kyriacou has been a journalist since 2001. She has written for newspapers around the country, including the Sunday Herald-Sun, the Adelaide Advertiser and Sunday Mail, and Brisbane's Courier-Mail and Sunday Mail. She has been the Courier-Mail's chief crime reporter since 2012 and has won awards, at both a state and national level, for her work as a crime writer.
Denis Ryan
Denis Ryan is the former Victorian Police officer who sought to bring the pedophile priest Monsignor John Day, to justice and break the nexus that extended police protection to the priest.
Michalia Arathimos
Michalia Arathimos is a Greek / New Zealand writer who lives in Melbourne with her partner and two sons. She is a prize-winning author of short stories and essays, and winner of the Sunday Star-Times Short Story Awards, 2016. She works as a freelance editor and is the fiction reviewer for Melbourne magazine Overland.
Heath O'Loughlin
Heath O'Loughlin is the son of a former member and 'Sons of God' Chief Inspector. Having earned the trust of members of the Special Operations Group, he is now telling their remarkable stories for the first time. Heath began his journalism cadetship at the Seven Network in Melbourne in 2001. In is time there, he covered some of Melbourne's most infamous crimes including underworld killings and other high-profile cases. He crossed to the Nine Network in 2006 to report on sport and co-anchor the weekend bulletin. After eight years in television news, he became General Manager of Media, Communications and Marketing at the North Melbourne Football Club in the AFL where he has been since 2008.
Barry Weston
Born a Capricorn in Paddington – 'The Paddo' Brisbane, Queensland, Barry Weston now lives with his wife and two chocolate Labradors on a few acres on a small island south of Hobart, Tasmania overlooking the Great Southern Ocean. In previous lives, he gained employment as various means of survival; as a car-park attendant, stereotyper, advertising salesman, commercial printer, private art teacher, railway porter, an 'outee' Painter and Docker, roof-painter, sign writer, cleaner, hotel barman and 'security attendant' (read that as bouncer). Through such employment and friendships, he came in contact with a cast of varied characters, from solicitors, professional thieves, police officers and hard-men. These experiences and yarns from such people feed into his fictional crime writing, and have assisted in developing an insight and understanding of the ethics of the 'knock-about' bloke, and the up/down side of the wrong/right coin. He is a graduate of the University of Tasmania with a Master's Degree in Visual Arts. His forty odd year career within the visual arts consists of thirty-eight solo/group exhibitions, regionally, nationally and internationally. He has taught visual arts at tertiary level at a few Australian universities, and Artist-in-Residence at a few others. After resigning his position at La Trobe University, Bendigo as Head of Department in 1999 and relocating to an island life-style, he has left the studio doors ajar, but now focuses primarily upon writing.
Katie Rowney
Katie Rowney started out as a journalist in a small country town and saw her first dead body on her second day on the job. After shifting through several community newspapers and freelancing for Fairfax, she joined the dark side as a media officer for the emergency services. Her job involved everything from evacuating towns during cyclones to trying to train firefighters not to swear during live to air interviews. She's currently a senior communications officer at a QLD university, helping engineers and scientists with no social skills share their findings with the world.
Megan Daymond
Megan Daymond is a crime author, writer and advocate for survivors of childhood cancer. Her debut crime novel 'Just Play Along' is the first book in the Andy Knight Series, based in Sydney's Northern Beaches – published February 2018. Megan is an advocate for survivors of childhood cancer, raising awareness of the long-term side effects of childhood cancer treatments. Through her blog Megan shares the challenges of her own journey as a survivor of childhood Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia; writing about her own personal experiences in the hope that other survivors may be able to relate to them as well as raising awareness about certain issues that face adult survivors of childhood cancer today.
Bill Bateman
Bill Bateman practiced medicine for 25 years on Victoria's rugged south-west coast, before moving with his family to the city. Currently he works at an inner suburban GP practice and a drop in clinic for the homeless. He was the author of a fortnightly (hopefully funny) column in The Australian Doctor, a national medical magazine, and now turns his pen to novel writing. The characters and setting of Hard Labour will appear in Bill's future books.
M.J. Tjia
M.J. Tjia has a PhD in Creative Writing and Literary Studes. Her novella The Fish Girl won Seizure's Viva la Novella, 2017. She has been shortlisted for the Josephine Ulrick Short Story Prize, Overland's Neilma Sidney Short Story Prize, Fish Short Story Prize, and the Luke Bitmead Bursary and longlisted for the CWA daggar awards. Her work has appeared in Review of Australian Fiction, Rex, Peril and Shibboleth and Other Stories.
M.T. Ellis
M.T. Ellis is a Brisbane based crime/ thriller writer. She has just published her debut novel, Azrael, and is currently writing her second book.
David Free
David Free is a critic and novelist based in Northern NSW.
Rusty Young
Rusty Young (born 1975) is the Australian-born author of the international bestseller Marching Powder, the true story of an English drug smuggler in Bolivia's notorious San Pedro Prison and the bestselling novel, Colombiano, a fact-meets-fiction revenge thriller about a Colombian boy who sets out to avenge his father's death.
Dervla McTiernan
Dervla McTiernan was born in County Cork, Ireland, to a family of seven. She studied corporate law at the National University of Ireland, Galway, and the Law Society of Ireland, and practised as a lawyer for twelve years. Following the global financial crisis, she moved with her family to Western Australia, where she now works for the Mental Health Commission.
Neil A. White
Born in Melbourne, Australia, I studied accounting in College before the allure of a career in tennis led me to make a tough decision. Remain home and become a CPA, or travel the world playing tennis? Did I say, tough decision? I accepted a tennis scholarship to America and graduated with a degree in Economics & Finance in 1985. After graduation, and with the dream of a playing career cut short by injury, it was time for a new challenge. Thus, began a ten-year stint with a major U.S. airline traversing the country in numerous roles. More recently, before the writing bug took hold, I toiled for fifteen years as a bank executive in Dallas, Texas.
John Hollenkamp
John Hollenkamp created The Darren Mangan Thriller Series with STEALTH, followed by A TROPICAL CURE. Darren is a dry-witted, good-looking Queenslander, (some people think he resembles the chap in Magnum PI, Tom Selleck) except a cabdriver doesn't make the same coin as a Hollywood actor. And that's where Darren's life runs a fine balance between good and a little bad...
Kate Lyons
Kate Lyons was born in 1965 in outback New South Wales. She has had her short fiction and poetry published in a range of Australian literary journals. Her first novel, The Water Underneath, was shortlisted in the 1999 The Australian/Vogel's Literary Award and was published by Allen & Unwin in 2001. Her second novel The Corner of Your Eye was published by Allen & Unwin in 2006.
Benjamin Stevenson
Benjamin Stevenson is an award-winning stand-up comedian and author. He has sold out shows from the Melbourne International Comedy Festival all the way to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and has appeared on ABCTV, Channel 10, and The Comedy Channel. Off-stage, Benjamin has worked for publishing houses and literary agencies in Australia and the USA.
Gabriella Coslovich
Gabriella Coslovic is a Melbourne based journalist with more than 20 years' experience, including 15 years at The Age newspaper where she specialised in arts writing and developed an extensive network of contacts in the arts world.
Robert Engwerda was born in the Netherlands, his family later settling in northern Victoria. His occupations have included fruit picker, factory worker, clerk, secondary school teacher and educational publisher. His first novel, Backwaters, was longlisted for the Miles Franklin Award in 2005, and in 2007 he won a place in the Australian Society of Authors' highly regarded mentorship program. Robert currently lives in Melbourne.
Leah Giarratano
Dr Leah Giarratano has had a long career as a psychologist. An expert in psychological trauma, sex offences and psychopathology, she has had many years' experience working with victims and psychopaths. She has worked in psychiatric hospitals, with the Australian Defence Force, and in corrective services with offenders who suffer severe personality disorders. She has assessed and treated survivors of just about every imaginable psychological trauma, including hostages; war veterans; rape, asult, and accident victims; and has worked with police, fire and ambulance officers.
Darren Williams
Darren Williams grew up on the far north coast of New South Wales. He had long wanted to be a writer and in 1992, Darren took time off work to begin his first novel, Swimming In Silk. He describes the process as 'months and months of hard work punctuated by moments of pure exhiliaration'.
Ruth Starke
Ruth Starke has worked in public relations and travel marketing, and at a great variety of other jobs - of which the most interesting, she says, were selling French perfume in Harrods, cooking on the radio, taking tourists to Kashmir, and interviewing Grand Prix drivers. She turned to fiction writing in 1992, and since then has written over a dozen novels for young people, including the best-selling NIPS XI which was recently named Honour Book (Younger Readers) in the 2001 CBC Awards, The Twist in the Tale, winner of an Aurealis award, and Coming Out, a CBC Notable Book (1998). For a complete list of titles visit the Books section of this website. Ruth lives in Adelaide where she teaches English at Flinders University and creative writing at TAFE. She reviews for Viewpoint and Australian Book Review magazines, has been a judge for the National Festival Awards for Children's Literature since 1995, and is deputy chair of the South Australian Writers' Centre.
Harry Ledowsky
Harry Ledowsky is one of Australia's most awarded Creative Directors and has been a judge on every major Advertising Award in Australia. Creator of "Oils Ain't Oils" for Castrol, "Aussie Cossie" for Speedo, "Happy Joe Happy" for the NRMA and "The Bundy Bear" for Bundaberg Rum. He was National Creative Director and head of the Worldwide Creative Directors for Young & Rubicam and was named as "the second most outstanding individual in Advertising" by the Financial Review. He has won over 150 National & International Advertising Awards and been nominated to the Australian Advertising Hall of Fame, who said he was: "A master of drama, pathos and humour ." Having retired from the ad industry he now presents the Morning show on 99.3 Northside Radio.
Iain Ryan
Iain Ryan grew up in the outer suburbs of Brisbane, Australia. His debut novel 'Four Days' is now available from Broken River Books. His work is previously published by Akashic Books (New York) and Crime Factory (Melbourne).
A.C. Efverman
Swedish crime fiction author A.C. Efverman was born Anna Charlotta Efverman in Stockholm, year 1972. She lived and worked in many countries before she finally settled in Australia in 1996. During her time of travel she saw and experienced many things - in one horrific moment she had a gun pointed at her head. She writes from her experience of being a victim of crime, as well as drawing from her extensive imagination, plus many hours' research of real life murderers, police procedures and forensic data. Her novels contain the same main characters and the stories are set in her adopted home town Sydney. A.C. Efverman is also an artist - she is a graduate of Stockholm School of Arts - and she utilizes her artistic view of the world in her writing. Her books are available world wide in both English and Swedish.
Kelly Brooke Nicholls
Kelly Brooke Nicholls' fascination with other cultures was instilled in her early years growing up on a boat in the south pacific islands. She's been passionate about human rights from an early age and following a stint as a journalist at Australian Associated Press she moved to Latin America when she was 23. From there she was compelled to make a difference and help people affected by conflict, abuse and extreme poverty. She has over 15 years' senior leadership experience working for NGOs ranging from Medecins Sans Frontieres/Doctors Without Borders to a small indigenous-led organisation in the Ecuadorian Amazon.
Tony Jones was still at school when Lionel Murphy raided ASIO. After an ABC cadetship, he joined the television program Four Corners as a reporter in 1985, and then went to Dateline at SBS in 1986. He subsequently was an ABC foreign correspondent, for a time in London and later in Washington. Inter alia, he covered the war crimes in Bosnia. For many years he presented the ABC TV current affairs program Lateline. Today he hosts Q&A on ABC TV on Monday nights.
Kylie Ladd
Kylie Ladd is a novelist and freelance writer. Her essays and articles have appeared in The Age, Griffith Review, O Magazine, The Sydney Morning Herald, Good Medicine, Kill Your Darlings, The Hoopla and MamaMia, among others. Kylie's first novel, After the Fall , was published in Australia, the US and Turkey, while her second, Last Summer, was highly commended in the 2011 Federation of Australian Writers Christina Stead Award for fiction. Her previous books are Naked: Confessions of Adultery and Infidelity and Living with Alzheimer's and Other Dementias. Kylie's third novel, Into My Arms, has been selected as one of Get Reading's Fifty Books You Can't Put Down for 2013. She holds a PhD in neuropsychology, and lives in Melbourne, Australia, with her husband and two children.
Ron Elliott
Ron Elliott is a scriptwriter, director and academic. His directorial credits include a feature film, Justice, and episodes of ABC programs such as Australia, You're Standing In It, The Gillies Report and Studio 86. Ron has written for Home and Away, Bush Patrol, Ship to Shore and many more children's television series. In 2001 he wrote the AFI nominated telemovie Southern Cross. Ron is currently a lecturer in Film and Television at Curtin University.
Sofie Laguna
Sofie Laguna originally studied to be a lawyer at the University of New South Wales, but after deciding law was not for her, she moved to Melbourne to train as an actor. Sofie worked for a number of years as an actor at the same time as completing a Diploma in Professional Writing and Editing at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. Sofie is now an author and playright writing for both adults and children.
Matt Neal
Matt Neal is an Australian journalist, musician and Rotten Tomatoes accredited film reviewer. He posts a song every few weeks on his blog Doc's Anthology. He lives in Warrnambool with his wife and son but will probably be run out of town when this is published. Bay of Martyrs is his first book. Dedicated to Danni and Reggie – my two true.
Jennifer Lane
I had my first taste of literary success at the age of eleven when I won St Michael's Primary School's Year Six creative writing competition with my dramatic World War II piece, Dominic Finds a Way. Twenty-four comparatively unsuccessful years later, I was one of the winners of NZ Book Month's Six Pack Twocompetition with Scout's Honour, an extract from an early draft of what was to become All Our Secrets. My short stories have been published in journals and magazines both here and across the Tasman, including Southerly: Writers and their Journals (Australia), Pulp (NZ), Viola Beadleton's Compendium (NZ) and Island (Australia).
John Lang (1816-1864) was the first Australian-born novelist, often lauded as the first known writer of detective fiction in the Anglophone world. He is best known for his collection of short stories in Botany Bay: True Tales of Early Australia (1859) and for his career as a barrister. His grandfather was transported to Australia in the First Fleet for stealing eight silver spoons. Lang spent most of his professional career in India. There, he launched an anti-government magazine called The Mofussilite, where he published his novels in serial form. These were often anonymous, and Lang is widely believed to be the author of Violet the Danseuse (1836), making him the first Australian to publish an international best-selling novel.
Blair Denholm
Blair Denholm is a freelance writer, editor and translator who has lived and worked in New York, Moscow, Munich, Abu Dhabi and Australia. He speaks fluent Russian and smatterings of other languages with varying degrees of success.
Katherine Kovacic
Katherine Kovocic was a veterinarian but preferred training dogs to taking their temperatures. She seized the chance to return to study and earned an MA, followed by a PhD in Art History. Katherine spends her spare time writing, dancing and teaching other people's dogs to ride skateboards.
Louise Milligan
Louise Milligan is an investigative reporter for the ABC TV 7.30 program, based in Melbourne.
Aiden L. Bailey
Aiden L. Bailey lives in Adelaide, Australia. His varied career has included roles as a corporate communications officer for the Australian Submarine Corporation, a technical writer for a several defense contractors, an engineer on a remote desert petroleum pipeline, a magazine editor and art director, and as a marketing manager in diverse industries such as information technology, mining, petroleum, healthcare and construction. In his twenties he travelled widely, predominately in Australia, Africa and South America, and returned home with some stories to tell.
Nick Athanasou
Nick Athanasou was born in Perth. He studied medicine in Sydney and has lived in England since 1980. He is currently Professor of Musculoskeletal Pathology at Oxford University.
Richard Young
Richard Young was born and educated in Sydney. He graduated from the University of Sydney with a Bachelor of Arts Degree in English Literature. Most of his career has been spent in advertising, but he has also worked in teaching, journalism, marketing and with the Australian Trade Commissioner Service. He has lived in Chile and New Zealand, and travelled extensively in Europe and Latin America.
William McInnes
William McInnes is one of Australia's most popular stage and screen actors. His leading roles in Sea Change and Blue Heelers have made him a household name. The mini-series Shark Net and My Brother Jack earned him widespread critical acclaim.
Sally Abbott
Sally Abbott is a former journalist and a PR Director who lives in Melbourne with her partner. She was the winner of The Richell Prize for Emerging Writers 2015. Closing Down is her first novel.
Niki Savva
Graeme Simsion
Graeme Simsion is a former IT consultant and the author of two nonfiction books on database design who decided, at the age of fifty, to turn his hand to fiction.
Magda Szubanski
Robin De Crespigny
Charlotte Wood
The Australian newspaper has described Charlotte Wood as "one of our most original and provocative writers."
Barbara Nicholson
A senior Aboriginal woman from the Illawarra district of New South Wales, traditional lands of the Wadi Wadi people, Barbara was born on the Kemblawarra reserve at Port Kembla. As a mature age student she graduated from the University of Newcastle with a triple major in English Literature. She later went on to teach Aboriginal Studies at the University of New South Wales, a position she held for five years. Following this she took up a position at Wollongong University and was eventually appointed to as a Senior Honorary Research Fellow in the Faculty of Law at Wollongong University (UoW), an appointment she has filled since 1999. Nicholson taught Aboriginal students in State Correctional Facilities and has undertaken casual consultative social research with independent social research companies. In 2014, Nicholson was awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws at Wollongong University.
Aunty Barbara Nicholson
Katherine X
Syd Wright
Raymond Gates
Jason Franks
Steve Cameron
Christopher Sequeira
T.S.P. Sweeney
J. Scherpenhuizen
Robert Veld
Doug Elliott
Philip Cornell
Shelley Robertson
Susan Metcalfe
David McRobbie
Jenny Pausacker
Renate Yatesi
Esther McKay
Esther McKay is a former Detective Senior Constable of the NSW Police, retiring Medically Unfit, Hurt on Duty in 2001. She holds a Diploma of Applied Science in Forensic Investigation.
Michael Tatlow
Michael Tatlow was Chief-of-Staff and Pictorial Editor at the Daily Telegraph, News Editor of the Sunday Telegraph and Acting Editor of The Bulletin. He also worked as Producer and Chief-of-Staff for ABC-TV News in Tasmania.
Melanie Casey
Melanie Casey was born and lives in South Australia with her two young children and her husband (who didn't know he was marrying a writer when he walked down the isle). After studying English Literature and Classical Studies, Melanie shifted in to Law, and now works in government. A chance meeting with a highschool English teacher in the supermarket made Melanie realize that she should be doing what she'd always loved, writing! Another period of study, this time at the Professional Writing School of Adelaide's College of the Arts ensued, helping Melanie acquire the skills she needed to put her plan into action.
Jan Richards
This is my patch, Mooloolaba, and it's Dusty's too. It's where I get my ideas and inspiration, and where Dusty gets to make her first case. It's not the most likely environment for crime, it's a family tourist destination, but I like to imagine there's a lot more going on than you see on the surface. It might look like the perfect place to pull up a deck chair and pull out my crime novel, soak up some sun, feel the sand between your toes. But once you get into it, and see it from Dusty's point of view, you might be cautious about going into the water. That's my job, to help you see what I see, and have some fun along the way. This is Dusty's first case, the second one is coming soon.
Jacqueline Wright
Jacqueline Wright worked for many years as a teacher and linguist in the Pilbara and Kimberley on Indigenous Australian Aboriginal language, interpreting and cultural programs. In 2000 she took on the regional literature position promoting and developing literary activities and improving opportunities for writers in the north-west of Western Australia. Now she swings two part-time jobs working as publishing intern at Magabala Books and a sports producer at ABC Radio, Broome. She completed a Creative Arts Doctorate at Curtin University.
Paul E. Hardisty
Paul is a writer, chartered environmental engineer, university professor, and triathlete. He lives in Perth, Western Australia, with his wife Heidi, and sons Zachary and Declan. His first novel, The Abrupt Physics of Dying, has just been published by Orenda Books. It is a story of greed, corruption, and the power of redemption
Roger Monk
Roger Monk was born in Adelaide and grew up in country South Australia. He spent many years in banking, latterly as bank secretary before joining the University of South Australia where he has spent the last 25-plus years specialising in organisational behaviour and the psychological implications of business practices, and as a supervisor of honours, masters and Ph.D. students. He has done substantial overseas research and lecturing, holds a doctorate in human and organisational psychology and is a fellow of the Financial Services Institute of Australasia. Whilst the author of numerous academic papers and articles, The Bank Inspector is his first venture into crime writing. He lives in the foothills above Adelaide with his wife, Valerie, a registered nurse, and enjoys writing, reading historical and modern biographies and murder mysteries, gardening and fishing. He has grown and made his own dry Riesling at their property in the Barossa hills.
Nicholas J Johnson
Nicholas J Johnson knows scams. After decades of rubbing shoulders with fraudsters and liars, he now works as a performer, writer and consultant, educating the public about the tricks of the con artist's trade.
Born in Melbourne in 1970, Richard Patterson independently determined that Thompson may be the Ripper in 1997. Patterson's continued research has made him a guest speaker at the 2005, UK Jack the Ripper Conference, held in Brighton. Has has been invited to speak again on his book and his latest findings at the 2016 Conference to be held in London. He has had articles published on the theory in newspapers, magazines and journals. He authored the Francis Thompson page on the Ripper Casebook, the world's most visited Ripper website. His research into this suspect has made news headlines around the world. Media interest includes, The UK Express, The Lancashire Evening Post, The UK Daily Mail, The UK Huffington Post, The Christian Science Monitor Magazine, The New York Daily News, The UK Sun, The UK Daily Star, The Examiner.com, The UK North West Tonight News & Sydney's 2UE Radio Station, The Echo, and The Northern Star.Patterson's research relies on press reports, police documents, letters, biographies, uncut-volumes, and the first hand examination of historical and artifacts relating to the case. These include the Ripper's infamous 'Dear Boss' letter of which Patterson personally handled, at London's Kew Archives. He also visited the Burns Library at Boston College in the US, where Patterson read Thompson's notebooks of 1888, and many other original documents including Thompson's private letters.
Richard Osborn
I spent thirty years in the advertising industry with Australia's largest advertising agency, George Patterson, in Sydney and throughout Asia. Since retirement I have written several (non crime) books including Milli the Magpie and the Penguin Guide to Retirement Hotspots. I also paint abstract artworks combining oils and airbrushing. I have three children and five grand children and live in Sydney's Eastern Suburbs with Judy, my partner of over twelve years. The idea for my first book began on 29th July 2011 when I visited a new up market restaurant in Sydney's Kings Cross, where friends and I observed cocaine dealing going on around us despite a strong police presence in the street outside. I had also experienced a murder in my own home some years earlier. Just a week later there was an armed siege in the house next door to where I live, which to me was just further proof of how all our lives are intertwined. And I thought...'There's definitely a book in this'. This is my first attempt at a crime novel.
Ray Mooney
Ray has been a freelance writer and lecturer in creative writing for three decades, specialising in novels, plays, film scripts and non-fiction books. He's one of a handful of writers with major success in each category. His plays have been produced throughout Australia. His novel, A Green Light, became Penguin's second biggest fiction seller for 1988. His screenplay, Everynight Everynight, co-written with director Alkinos Tsilimidos, won awards throughout the world and his recently published non-fiction book, A Pack of Bloody Animals, sensationally revealed another side to the Walsh Street murders. Ray specialises in crime and social injustice. His articles have appeared in many national and local publications including The Age, The Sunday Age and The Crime Factory. As an educator Ray lectured in novel, playwriting, screenwriting and short story writing at Holmesglen Institute, Box Hill TAFE and the VCA Film and Television School. Recently he completely rewrote A Green Light, regarded by many as Australia's best crime book, into three stand-alone eBooks. His latest non-fiction book, The Ethics of Evil, about H Division, Pentridge, is due for release as an eBook.
Ged Gillmore
Ged Gillmore grew up in the Midlands of England before moving to London where he completed degrees in languages and literature at the University of London. After graduating, Ged worked in France, Germany and Italy before returning to London for eighteen years where he gained experience in a variety of roles including the police service, the film industry and banking. Fancying a change to sunnier climes, Ged made the leap to Sydney in early 2004. When he's not falling off his surfboard at Bondi or dabbling with a day job which pays the bills he sits at his laptop and bashes out fiction. In October 2017, Ged launches Headland - the first book in the new 'Bill Murdoch Mystery' series. Headland kicks off the hard-boiled adventures of Bill Murdoch, a lovable English rogue, as he tries to leave his criminal past behind him and adapt to a new life as a private investigator in small town Australia. Murdoch will return in the sequels, Class Act, and Base Nature (in late 2017 / early 2018).
Alison Goodman
Alison is the author of Singing the Dogstar Blues, a science-fiction comedy thriller, which won an Aurealis Award for Best Young Adult Novel, was listed as a Children's Book Council Notable Book, and was shortlisted for the 1999 Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Young Adult Fiction. In 2003 it was also published in the UK, Germany and the US and was recently listed as an American Library Association Best Young Adult Book of 2004. Alison lives in Melbourne, Australia, with her husband, Ron, and their two exuberant Parson Russell Terriers, Xander and Spike. She was the 1999 D. J. O'Hearn Memorial Fellow at Melbourne University, holds a Master of Arts, and teaches creative writing at postgraduate level. Alison is currently working on a fantasy duology based on Imperial China; the first volume will be published in 2007 in Australia by HarperCollins and Spring 2008 by Viking in the US.
David Franklin was born in 1971 and educated at Cardiff University, but now lives in Brisbane. He has won absolutely no awards for anything.
Sandra Winter-Dewhirst
A journalist for more than 30 years, Sandra spent 10 years as the state director of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in South Australia, overseeing a branch of 350 people across television, radio, and online production. Educated at Adelaide University and the University of South Australia and graduating with degrees in the arts and journalism, she has sat on a range of arts boards and advisory councils within the media industry. In 2008 she was named one of South Australia's 50 most influential people by Adelaide's daily paper, The Advertiser. Sandra has a passion for food and wine and all things Adelaide and South Australian.
Ron Thomas
Ron Thomas grew up in Punchbowl, a working-class suburb in Sydney's west. As a boy, he would spend many a Saturday waiting for his grandfather's racing pigeons to arrive home from faraway places. Waiting by grandad's vegetable patch, various old mates would tell tall tales and true to while away the hours, and a boy's imagination did the rest. One long, hot afternoon, Sid, one of the oldies, told stories of his formative years in what he called 'Razorhurst'. Many of Sid's recollections are embedded in Dark Angels.
Edward Berridge
Edward Berridge came to Australia with his family in 1975. On leaving school, he worked in a number of jobs before completing a Bachelor of Arts degree at the University of Sydney, where he also edited Honi Soit.
Angus McLean
I'm a Police officer and writer, a student of life and a fan of crime and adventure fiction. I grew up watching the TV private eye and cop shows of the 80's, rocking to the music of the 80's and reading classic crime and action stories-some of these were written in the 80's. Did I mention the 80's rocked?
Chris Hammer was a journalist for more than thirty years, dividing his career between covering Australian federal politics and international affairs. For many years he was a roving foreign correspondent for SBS TV's flagship current affairs program Dateline. He has reported from more than 30 countries on six continents. In Canberra, roles included chief political correspondent for The Bulletin, current affairs correspondent for SBS TV and a senior political journalist for The Age. His first book, The River, published in 2010 to critical acclaim, was the recipient of the ACT Book of the Year Award and was shortlisted for the Walkley Book Award and the Manning Clark House National Cultural Award. Chris has a bachelor's degree in journalism from Charles Sturt University and a master's degree in international relations from the Australian National University. He lives in Canberra with his wife, Dr Tomoko Akami. The couple have two children.
Sarah Myles
Sarah Myles began to write fiction after graduating in literature from Monash University, and studying at the University of Western Australia. She has trained and worked as a nurse, travelled through Europe, the Americas and Africa. She is the author of Transplanted. Currently she divides her time between writing and family, living in inner Melbourne and on the west coast of Victoria.
Michael Brissenden
Currently ABC Correspondent in Washington, Michael Brissenden has been a political journalist and a foreign correspondent for the ABC since the 1980s. He has reported from Russia, the Middle East, South East Asia, Europe, the Pacific and the Americas and has covered many of the biggest international stories from all corners of the globe.
Kel Robertson
Kel Robertson grew up in country New South Wales. He has worked as a barman, labourer, industrial advocate and policy adviser. He is a graduate of a number of Australian universities and lives and works in Canberra. Dead Set is his first novel.
Emily Maguire
Andrew Grimes
Andrew Grimes lives in central Victoria with his wife and their two children. He is working on more crime novels featuring Maclaine.
Catherine Titasey
Catherine Titasey was born in Sydney, raised in Papua New Guinea and travelled widely with her family and as a young adult. She studied law at the University of Queensland and then worked as a solicitor before taking an extended overseas adventure that ended on Thursday Island, a multicultural community in the Torres Strait. There she fell in love with a local fisherman and they now have six children. In 2012, Catherine won the Queensland Literary Award for Emerging Queensland Author for the manuscript of this novel.
Aaron Sterns
Aaron Sterns was the co-writer of the film Wolf Creek 2 and script editor of Rogue. A former lecturer in Gothic and Subversive Fiction, editor of The Journal of the Australian Horror Writers, and researcher in postmodern horror, Sterns is the author of stories both Aurealis Award–nominated and Year's Best Fantasy & Horror–recommended. He lives in Melbourne with his partner of fifteen years and their newly brewed daughter, the third of the 'Wolf Creek babies'.
Julie Szego
Julie Szego began her career as a lawyer before she switched to journalism. She spent 12 years at The Age newspaper where she held various roles including social affairs reporter, senior writer, leader writer and columnist.
Ann Turner
Ann Turner is an award-winning screenwriter and director, avid reader, and history lover. She is drawn to salt-sprayed coasts, luminous landscapes, and the people who inhabit them all over the world. She is a passionate gardener. Her films include the historical feature Celia starring Rebecca Smart—which Time Out listed as one of the fifty greatest directorial debuts of all time, Hammers Over The Anvil starring Russell Crowe and Charlotte Rampling, and the psychological thriller Irresistible starring Susan Sarandon, Sam Neill, and Emily Blunt. Ann has lectured in film at the Victorian College of the Arts. Returning to her first love, the written word, in her debut novel The Lost Swimmer Ann explores themes of love, trust and the dark side of relationships. She is currently working on her second novel, Out of the Ice, a mystery thriller set in Antarctica. Ann was born in Adelaide and lives in Victoria.
Anne Buist
Anne Buist is the Chair of Women's Mental Health at the University of Melbourne. She has over twenty-five years' clinical and research experience in perinatal psychiatry, and works with protective services and the legal system in cases of abuse, kidnapping, infanticide and murder. Medea's Curse is her first thriller.
Anne Davies
Anne is a teacher with 20 years experience who understands what young adults want to read. Taught at Hamilton High for 10 years, then Applecross High. Member of Society of Women's Writers WA.
Ayman Kole
Ayman studied intensively at the University of Sydney, completing a Bachelor of Arts degree with a triple major: English, Performance Studies, and Studies in Religion. He also completed an MA in English in 2006, from the same university and wrote the short story "The Mirror" which was the Phoenix Journal finalist, published by Sydney University Press. He has worked as a writer for various publications and as a lecturer in English, Film and Creative Writing at various universities. He has completed his PhD in History, English and Creative Writing from Charles Stuart University.
Anna Jaquiery
Anna Jaquiery was born in France 39 years ago and is of French-Indian descent. She has lived in many places, from Russia to New Zealand, due to personal and professional circumstances. She is currently based in Melbourne, Australia.
Deborah Rogers
Deborah Rogers is a fan of all good suspense, mystery and true crime books. She has a Graduate Diploma in Scriptwriting, and graduated cum laude from the Hagley Writers' Institute. When she's not writing American psychological thrillers, she likes to take her chocolate Labrador for walks on the beach and make decadent desserts.
Gail Jones
Gail Jones is the author of two short-story collections, a critical monograph, and the novels BLACK MIRROR, SIXTY LIGHTS, DREAMS OF SPEAKING, SORRY and FIVE BELLS.
Lindsay Tanner
Lindsay Tanner was the minister for finance and deregulation in the Rudd-Gillard governments, and held the seat of Melbourne for the ALP from 1993 to 2010. Having retired from politics at the 2010 federal election, he is now a special adviser to Lazard Australia, and is a vice-chancellor's fellow and adjunct professor at Victoria University.
Terry R Barca
I'm an author who lives and works in the Dandenong Ranges, on the eastern edge of Melbourne Australia. I take one day at a time but occasionally I'm attacked by several days at once. My amazing wife and I have lived in The Hills for forty years. My favourite colour is green and so is my favourite car. I started my working life as a Primary School Teacher in the early 1970s. Since then I have been a stained glass craftsman, furniture restorer, restorer of Player Pianos and music rolls, author (one book so far another on the way), photographer, basketball trading card manufacturer, basketball coach, basketball player, basketball referee, part-time shop assistant, newspaper columnist, homeschool dad, husband, father, grandfather, and a few other bits and pieces, and not in this order. I'm fascinated by people, but I prefer the company of dogs. I'm not frightened of dying, but sometimes life scares the hell out of me. I think that birds are cool but I don't believe that they spend any time thinking about me, even though I give them lots of stale bread, and the occasional pizza crust........ ungrateful bastards!
Angus Gillies
Angus Gillies is the author of books about All Black Justin Marshall, Blackcaps cricketer Adam Parore, Kiwis rugby league player Matthew Ridge, his father former Celtic footballer Iain Gillies and pop star John Rowles. He has also written the three volume true crime series Ngati Dread, crime novella The Lizard Song and a journalism book about TV news coverage of the death of Princess Diana. He is a TV producer at 3 News in New Zealand. He is married to the artist Tui Emma Gillies and they have three children together, plus Angus has an older son.
Anna Westbrook
Anna Westbrook is a Sydney-based writer and critic. She holds a PhD in creative writing and lectures at New York University Sydney. She was shortlisted for theAustralian/Vogel Literary Award at the age of twenty-one, and has also been a recipient of an Australian Society of Authors mentorship (where she worked with Fiona McGregor, author of Indelible Ink) and an Australian Poetry Poet in Residence award. Her work appears in publications in Australia, the United States, and France. Dark Fires Shall Burn is her first novel.
Melina Marchetta was born in Sydney Australia. Her first novel, Looking For Alibrandi was awarded the Children's Book Council of Australia award in 1993 and her second novel, Saving Francesca won the same award in 2004. Looking For Alibrandi was made into a major film in 2000 and won the Australian Film Institute Award for best Film and best adapted screen play, also written by the author. On the Jellicoe Road was released in 2006 and won the WAYRBA voted by teenagers in Western Australia in 2008. It also won the US Printz Medal in 2009 for excellence in YA literature. This was followed up by Finnikin of the Rock in 2008 which won the Aurealis Award for YA fantasy, The Piper's Son in 2010 which was shortlisted for the Qld Premier's Lit Award, NSW Premier's Lit Award, Prime Minister's Literary Awards, CBC awards and longlisted for the Miles Franklin Award. Her follow up to Finnikin, Froi of the Exiles will be released in Australia in October and the US in March 2012.
Sarah Bailey is a Melbourne-based writer with a background in advertising and communications. She has two young children and currently works as a director of creative projects company Mr Smith.
Brendan James Murray
Brendan Murray grew up on Victoria's Mornington Peninsula and has been writing for as long as he can remember. Though his first love is nonfiction, he also enjoys writing creatively; his short stories have twice received National Literary Awards from the Fellowship of Australian Writers.
Carolyn Pethick
It is now 2016 and I have recently retired from the Victoria Police Force after nearly thirty years of service. I have enjoyed much of my time during these thirty years and believe the police force is a great career. Over the past few years it has become a great career for women who are now mostly treated as equals to the male members. I often recommend it as a great challenging career for women when I give talks to many different groups. When I joined, only approximately fourteen percent of the police force were women. This number has now grown to about forty percent. Although this book will show some of the horrific conditions policewomen had to work through during the early years, I must also add that I had some of the greatest times in my life whilst working in the Victorian Police Force.
Steve Kelleher
Steve Kelleher worked as an Australian Customs Dog handler for 16 years, including 6 years in Tasmania. He believes that working with dogs is preferable to working with people. He has travelled extensively and studied nature conservation while attempting to become a park ranger. He has an appetite for good stories and believes that a journey isn't over until the stories of it have been written, so he has taken care to write his adventures down. Work is a long and often overlooked journey that most people have little to show for.
Dave Sinclair
Dave is a novelist, a screenwriter and a really excellent parallel parker. He lives in Melbourne with his partner and two crazy daughters. His debut novel, The Barista's Guide to Espionage isn't the first novel he's written. Let's call the other ones practice runs. A prolific writer, he spent a lot of time trying to break into the publishing world*. Dave isn't a full time writer. He just has too much spare time on his hands. By day he's a corporate stooge, by night he's a (two finger) typing fool. He's also an award winning filmmaker. A title that sounds much more impressive than it really is. He won a best comedy screenplay and cinematography award for one of the short films he wrote and directed, though at the time he didn't really know what cinematography was. A completed screenplay is currently doing the rounds.
Lexi Landsman
Lexi Landsman is an Australian author, journalist and television producer. Her debut novel, The Ties That Bind, published by Penguin Random House, came out in 2016. Her second novel, The Perfect Couple is a psychological suspense thriller set in Florence. It will be released on 28 August 2017.
John Killick
Bill Wicks
The author, Bill Wicks is an ex-soldier and officer and semi retired surveyor, teaching surveying at the local polytechnic. Apart from being an enthusiastic home brewer he is also a very bad guitarist and surfer.
Maria Lewis
Maria Lewis is a journalist and author based in Sydney, Australia. Getting her start as a police reporter, her work on pop culture has appeared in publications such as the New York Post, Guardian, Penthouse, The Daily and Sunday Telegraph, Empire Magazine, The Daily Mail, Penthouse, Junkee, WHO Weekly, Huffington Post, SBS, ABC and many more. A journalist for over 14 years, she was previously seen on SBS Viceland's nightly news program The Feed as a presenter, producer and writer and as the host of Cleverfan on ABC Indigenous, the live Cleverman post-show talk show.
Geraldine Brooks
Australian-born Geraldine Brooks is an author and journalist who grew up in the Western suburbs of Sydney, and attended Bethlehem College Ashfield and the University of Sydney. She worked as a reporter for The Sydney Morning Herald for three years as a feature writer with a special interest in environmental issues.
Jim Maxwell
Maggie Groff
Maggie Groff is the bestselling author of two non-fiction books, and she wrote a weekly column also titled Hoax Cuisine, for two years from 2002-2004 for Sunday Life Magazine which was distributed through The Sun-Herald Sunday and The Sunday Age.
Wendy Lewis
Wendy Lewis is a contemporary Australian writer. She works in Sydney. She has written a number of non-fiction books about Australian people, history and events. She has also written plays (working under the nom de plume Julia Lewis).
Hugh McGinlay
Hugh McGinlay is a Melbourne based writer and musician. To support these frivolous life choices he has worked as a bus driver, storeman, kitchen hand and dental equipment salesman. His Novella Mosquito was a finalist in the 2012 Griffith Novella Competition. As a musician he has released three albums and occasionally gets played on the radio. He lives with his wife and their two children.
Melissa James
Sydneysider Melissa James is a former nurse and has worked as a waitress, store assistant, and perfume and chocolate demonstrator. A highly successful Mills & Boon author, Melissa has over 20 romance titles published. Four of these were romantic suspense with Silhouette Intimate Moments (two of which won Romantic Times Top Picks). Under the name Lisa Chaplin, Melissa writes Napoleonic and ancient historical fiction.
p.d.r. Lindsay
p.d.r. lindsay wrote her first 'novel' aged seven, an attempt to persuade her parents to buy her a pony. It didn't work, but she'd discovered that writing and reading were an escape from her tormenting brother and devious sister. She could create people who loved her and wonderful imaginative places to escape to. Poetry became her first love, then plays and finally stories from her adult imagination for herself and adult readers
Ruth Wykes
Even though she has been writing all her life, in one form or another, 2010 will be the year Ruth Wykes has her first taste of being a published author. She has co-written a true crime book with friend and mentor, Lindy Cameron. Women Who Kill will be available in May. Her interest in true crime and her love of crime fiction is reflected in her personal library; the only thing that competes with the resident felines for domination of her modest, but happy, home. For ten years Ruth was editor and publisher of a magazine, until she grew tired of the constant battle between wanting to write something of reasonable quality, then trying to sell it to a readership that was yearning for something quick and easy to digest. A little like the trends in our Western diets really. These days Ruth is often bemused by the knowledge that she works in a place that sells murder weapons, crime-concealment tools, and other apparently malevolent stock for the criminally minded – Bunnings. It has certainly made her look a little harder at some of the customers who ask her for rope, shovels and chainsaws. At the same time it offers up some interesting material for her imagination, and has inspired some of the more random moments in the crime fiction novel she is currently writing. She remains unclear about her role in the house she shares with five cats. There are moments when she feels like the unpaid cleaner, cook and masseuse of the menagerie – and other times where she just feels like she has been slotted somewhere into the predominantly feline hierarchy. She harbors a dream to travel extensively through Europe, to relocate to the eastern seaboard… and she lives for the day her beloved
Sisters in Crime Australia
Sisters in Crime Australia have now published two collections of Scarlet Stiletto Award winning short stories.
Cameron Trost
Cameron Trost is a writer of strange, mysterious, and creepy tales about people just like you. He is the author of "Hoffman's Creeper and Other Disturbing Tales" and "The Tunnel Runner", and is the creator of Oscar Tremont, Investigator of the Strange and Inexplicable. Black Beacon Books, his independent publishing house, was founded in 2013 and specialises in mystery, suspense, and horror anthologies. Cameron hails from Australia but now lives on the rugged coast of Brittany. Castles, forests, storms, and whisky are a few of his favourite things. https://trostlibrary.blogspot.com/
Annie Hauxwell
Annie Hauxwell was born in London and emigrated with her family to Australia when she was a teenager. She abandoned the law to work as an investigator for a private firm, and after working as a screenwriter she turned her hand to novels. She now lives in Castlemaine, Victoria, and travels to London frequently.
Kay Saunders
Kay Saunders AM was Professor of History and Senator of the University of Queensland from 2002 to 2006. In 2001 she received the Medal of the National Museum of Australia and in 2006 was the recipient of the John Kerr Medal from the Royal Historical Society of Queensland.
Peter Cotton
Peter Cotton has been the media advisor to three federal cabinet ministers, worked as a foreign correspondent for the ABC, been a senior reporter on the ABC's AM and PM programs, and had stories published in most major print outlets in Australia.
Karen M. Davis
Hurt on duty, Karen Davis retired from the New South Wales Police Force as a Detective Senior Constable after twenty years of service. From front-line policing to investigations and undercover operations Karen really has seen it all. She lives in Sydney, and Sinister Intent is her first novel.
Karen M Davis
Peter Docker
Peter Docker was born in Wiilman Country at Narrogin, Western Australia, and is of Irish, Cornish and English heritage. He grew up on a station in Wudjari Country at Coomalbidgup, near Esperance. He has worked as a dairy-hand, hay carter, wheat-bogger, window-washer, bank teller, lift driver and barman. He has written short stories published in Australian literary journals and has written for stage and radio. Someone Else's Country was his first book. He is currently writing a play about the Mickelbergs.
Stephen Orr
Stephen Orr is the author of several published works of fiction and non-fiction. His novel Time's Long Run was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and longlisted for the Miles Franklin Award in 2011.
Vanessa Skye
Vanessa Skye has always had a love of words and spent her school years writing poetry, speeches and fictional essays. After completing a Bachelor of Arts in Print Journalism and studying Psychology at Charles Sturt University, Vanessa got a job at Australia's largest publisher of regional and agricultural news and information, Rural Press, where she worked as a journalist in the Central West of NSW for four years. Thousands of stories later, Vanessa decided to move back to Sydney and try her hand at public relations while studying a Master of Arts in Communication. Skip forward a few years and Vanessa once again found herself joyfully studying various psychology subjects while managing a Sydney public relations firm. Enthralled with examining the motivations behind people's actions, Vanessa realized what she really wanted to do in life was combine her love of words with her fascination for human behavior. So Vanessa quit public relations to begin the significantly more impoverished life of a professional writer.
Sophie Masson
Born in Indonesia of French parents, Sophie Masson was sent to live with her paternal grandmother in Toulouse, France, when she was just a baby and lived there till she was nearly five, when her parents came back from Indonesia and took her to Australia. All the rest of her childhood, the family stayed in Australia, with frequent trips back to France, and this dual heritage underpins a good deal of Sophie's work. Sophie's first book appeared in 1990 and since then she has published more than sixty novels, for children, young adults and adults. Her books have been published in Australia, the USA, UK, France, Germany, Italy, and many other countries. She has also had many short stories and articles published in newspapers, magazines, and online journals.
Kat Clay is an award-winning photographer and writer from Melbourne, Australia. She is the author of Double Exposure, a weird crime novella published by Crime Factory. In 2015, she was honored to receive a Melbourne UNESCO City of Literature travel grant. Kat has written articles for both travel and academic magazines, including Literary Traveler, TNT, Travel Weekly, Matador and Weird Fiction Review.
J.M. Peace
J.M. Peace is a serving police officer who would rather be writing about policing. Over the past 15 years, she has served throughout south-east Queensland in a variety of different capacities. Her voice of authority shines through in her debut crime thriller, A Time To Run. J.M. Peace she has also written various short stories, blogs regularly about policing and writing and is currently working on her second novel. JM lives on the Sunshine Coast, juggling writing and police work with raising two kids along with her partner.
Jane Blythe
Born in Melbourne, Australia, Jane Blythe has had a love of reading and writing since she can remember. She is the author of two crime/mystery series, Detective Parker Bell, and the new series, Count to Ten. Jane also has a Bachelor of Early Childhood Education and has been working with children for the last fifteen years, primarily as a preschool teacher. As such she wanted to write a series of books for this age group and created the Victoria Ivory Pearl series, written with grade 5/6 classes as she also wanted to imprint on kids a love of writing and a love of sharing their knowledge with others. When she's not writing Jane loves to bake, go to the beach, ski, horse ride, Taekwondo, play with her two Dalmatians, spend time with family and friends, and add to her 200+ collection of teddy bears!
Mark Hollands
Mark Hollands was born in Portsmouth in southern England and spent his teenage years in Devon, playing cricket, rugby and cultivating a prolific knowledge of music trivia thanks to punk-era media like the NME, Melody Maker, Kerrang! and Sounds. He began his media career as a 16-year-old cub reporter and tea-boy at The Sidmouth Herald, and went on to edit magazines before migrating to Australia after a working holiday took a permanent turn. He has held editorial roles in major media companies across Australia and the UK, and spent two years as a journalist in Papua New Guinea. He's currently CEO of the Australian media industry body, The Newspaper Works. Mark has worked in major American companies Gartner Inc. and Dow Jones, launched a dotcom back in the day, is a keen student of psychology and devours crime novels and music biographies. He lives in Sydney with wife Kylie and youngest son Charlie.
Geoffrey Gates
Geoffrey Gates was born in Sydney, where he lives with his family. He is the author of IP Picks 2005 Best Fiction winnerA Ticket for Perpetual Locomotion, as well as short stories published in a range of literary journals such asSoutherly, LINQ, UQ Vanguardand Verandah. Geoffrey teaches English and creative writing to senior school students, and has worked as a teacher in Australia, England and Germany. He has spent many months in the Provence and Drome regions of France where he drew inspiration as the setting for The Copyart Murders, his second novel.
Kylie Kaden
Since being plucked from the Random House slushpile, Brisbane writer Kylie Kaden is now an internationally published author of women's fiction (when she's not wrangling her sticky brood of boys). Kylie followed her breakthrough debut Losing Kate, with another critically acclaimed suspenseful read, Missing You, in 2015.
Gideon Haigh
Gideon Haigh has been a journalist for more than thirty years, contributed to more than a hundred newspapers and magazines, written thirty books and edited seven others. His book On Warne won the British Sports Book Awards Best Cricket Book of the Year Award, the Cricket Society and MCC Book of the Year Award, the Jack Pollard Trophy, and the Waverley Library Nib Award; it was also shortlisted for the Australian Book Industry Awards Biography of the Year, the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards, and the Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature. The Office won the NSW Premier's Literary Awards Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-fiction. Other recent titles include Uncertain Corridors: Writings on Modern Cricket, End of the Road? on Australia's automotive industry, and The Deserted Newsroom, about media in a digital age.
Natalie Barelli
You will usually find Natalie Barelli reading a book, and that book will more likely than not be a psychological thriller. Writing a novel was always on the bucket-list, and while on a break from work, she decided to give it a try. She hasn't stopped writing since. When not absorbed in the latest gripping page-turner, Natalie works as an IT professional, loves cooking when she has the time, knits very badly and spends far too much time at the computer. She lives in rural NSW, in Australia.
Brad Norington
Kathy Jackson was hailed as a heroine for blowing the whistle on the million-dollar fraud of Michael Williamson, the corrupt boss of the Health Services Union. While remaining steadfast in this very public ordeal, she endured bitter personal attacks from enemies in the Labor Party and the union movement. But what if Jackson was just as corrupt as Williamson? Or worse? This is the real HSU story. The unbelievable misuse of the union dues of some of the lowest paid workers in Australia. While Jackson was portrayed as a Joan of Arc figure, she had been spending vast amounts of her own union members' money on jet-setting holidays, fashion, jewellery, a home mortgage and even part of a divorce settlement. Nothing, it seems, was off limits. The HSU scandal is more than a dark morality tale marked by high drama and farce. It exposes deep problems at the heart of the union movement and the Labor Party: tribalism, nepotism, a misplaced sense of entitlement and the abuse other peoples' money. Together they are an intoxicating mixture and provide a ripe environment for corruption on a grand scale.
Megan Goldin
Megan Goldin worked as a producer and foreign correspondent for the ABC and Reuters in Asia and the Middle East where she covered war zones and wrote about war, peace and international terrorism. After she had her third child, she returned to her hometown of Melbourne to raise her children and write fiction, often while waiting at her sons' basketball training sessions.
Pam Arnold
Retiring from a successful business at age 75, Pam Arnold discovered the fun of writing. The Procurers, the third in the Biddy and Justin suspense thriller series, is acclaimed as the most exiting yet. It is often suggested that Pam now 81, should write her memoirs. The reply, an adamant, "No way, even the suggestion might alarm some people!"
Jane Harper
Jane Harper has worked as a print journalist for thirteen years both in Australia and the UK. She lives in Melbourne and writes for the Herald Sun, among other publications. Winner of the Victorian Premier's Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript, The Dry is her first novel with rights sold to over twenty territories.
Alan Carter was born in Sunderland, UK, in 1959. He holds a degree in Communication Studies from Sunderland Polytechnic and immigrated to Australia in 1991. Alan lives in Fremantle with his wife Kath and son Liam. He works as a television documentary director. In his spare time he follows a black line up and down the Fremantle pool.
Meg Vann
Mez Breeze
Donna Hancox
Ken MacKenzie
Andy Burley
Joe Blake
Meet Detective Joe Blake, Australia's newest hero! "You can shoot a man hard or you can shoot a man soft. Hard would have been in the guts or the nuts or the knees."
Phil Cleary is a well-known media personality and contributes regularly to the newspapers and radio. He has a national profile as a speaker and campaigner against the criminal justice system's treatment of violence against women. In 1992 he won former Prime Minister Bob Hawke's seat of Wills and remains the only independent to have ever won a seat in the federal parliament in Victoria. Before his political career, Phil taught history and politics for thirteen years in the state secondary education system. He first came to public prominence as a player and coach with Coburg Football Club in the Victorian Football Association in the 1970s and 80s.
Jan Pearson
Janet Ryan has written this first of The Celestial Symbols crime quartet under the name of Jan Pearson. Pearson draws material for her books from her life experiences and memories of living in Hong Kong during the 1960's. An Australian, she has lived in the Northern Rivers region of New South Wales for thirteen years. Tiger Autumn was published in Hong Kong this year and was launched in Australia in October.
Deborah Tait
Deborah Tait writes suspense with a touch of romance and a definite Australian sensibility. Whether it be stumbling over bodies in the Blue Mountains, deciphering puzzles in latte swilling Sydney or running for their lives across the red dirt of the Outback, her characters remain rooted in the heart and soul of The Great Southland.
Aiofe Clifford
All These Perfect Strangers is Aoife Clifford's first novel, but she has already won the two major Australian crime writing prizes in short story form: the Ned Kelly - SD Harvey Short Story Award and the Scarlet Stiletto. She was also shortlisted for the UK Crime Writers Association Debut Dagger. In 2013, she was awarded an Australian Society of Author's mentorship for All These Perfect Strangers.
Aoife Clifford
Emma Viskic
Emma Viskic is a Melbourne-based crime writer. She has won two of Australia's premier crime fiction short story awards: the Ned Kelly S.D. Harvey Award (2014) and the New England Thunderbolt Award (2013). She has had stories placed and shortlisted in numerous other competitions and been published in Award Winning Australian Writing. She wrote the final daft of Resurrection Bay while being mentored through the UK-based WoMentoring.
Bernard Keane
Bernard Keane has been Crikey's correspondent in Canberra since 2008, writing on politics, media and economics. He was educated at the University of Sydney, where he studied history. Before joining Crikey he was a public servant and speechwriter in transport and communications. He is the author of the ebook War On The Internet and co-author of A Short History of Stupid, with Helen Razer, published by Allen & Unwin in 2014. Surveillance is his first novel.
Caroline de Costa
Caroline de Costa is a professor at the School of Medicine at James Cook University, Cairns. Her publications include Hail Caesar, which was shortlisted for the Queensland Premier's Literary Awards (Science Writing) in 2008 and a number of health books for women. She won the 2013 Prix de l'Academie Nationale des Sciences, Belles-Lettres et Arts de Bordeaux and the 2014 Prix de l'Academie des Arts et des Lettres du Perigord for her publication co-authored with Francesca Miller, The Diva and Doctor God – letters from Sarah Bernhardt to Dr Samuel Pozzi.
Greg Mclean came to world attention in 2005 with his debut feature film, Wolf Creek, creating one of Australia's most memorable and horrific characters, Mick Taylor (played by John Jarratt). Mclean also wrote, directed and produced Rogue (2007) and was executive producer of Red Hill (2012) and Crawlspace (2013). He is the author of the four-part comic book series Dark Axis: Secret Battles of WW2 and the graphic novel Sebastian Hawks – Creature Hunter. His long-awaited sequel to his first feature, Wolf Creek 2, will be released February 2014.
Peter Mulraney
Peter Mulraney is Australia's crime writing mystic. He grew up in country South Australia, before going to Adelaide to complete high school and attend university. While he was studying in the city, he met an Italian girl and forgot to go home. He's married with two grown children. Before devoting himself to writing, Peter worked as a teacher, an insurance agent, a banker and a public servant. His Inspector West series of crime novels explores the lives of people who commit crimes, mess up relationships and fall in love - not necessarily in that order - and the life of Inspector Carl West, who sometimes solves a crime or two.
Colin Dillon
Colin Dillon joined the Queensland police force in 1965 (before the 1967 referendum, which supposedly offered Aboriginal Australians full and equal citizenship). He worked within that system for almost four decades and became the first commissioned Indigenous Police Inspector in Australia. He still lives in Queensland.
Tony Black
Tony Black was born in NSW, Australia. He is the author of 13 novels. He has been nominated for seven CWA Daggers and was runner-up in the Guardian's Not the Booker prize for The Last Tiger . He has written three crime series, a number of crime novellas and a collection of short stories.
Laura Elizabeth Woollett
Laura Elizabeth Wollett was born and raised in Perth, Western Australia. She moved to Melbourne after high school and, in 2012, completed an honours degree in creative writing at the University of Melbourne.
Jimmy Thomson
Jimmy Thomson is a journalist, author and screenwriter whose credits include the ABC-TV series Rain Shadow. He is the author of sixteen books ranging through military history, sports biographies and children's literature.
Robert Wainwright
Robert Wainwright has been a journalist for 30 years, rising from the grassroots of country journalism in Western Australia to become a senior writer with The Sydney Morning Herald. His career has ranged from politics to crime, always focusing on the people behind the major news of the day. He was a Walkley Awards finalist in 2004.
Y.A. Erskine
Author Y.A. Erskine spent 11 years in the Tasmanian Police Service. She served as a detective in the CIB and as an undercover investigator. In her spare time, she was a member of the elite Protective Security Section.
Stephen Sewell
Stephen Sewell is the screenwriter of the award-winning film The Boys, and has won numerous awards for his plays including Three Furies: Scenes from the Life of Francis Bacon. He was also script editor on the film Chopper. Victory Books published his adaptation of the film Animal Kingdom in 2010 and, in August 2011, will release his debut novel, Babylon.
Stuart Littlemore
Stuart Littlemore QC is an Australian barrister and former journalist and television presenter. He was the writer and host of the ABC's Media Watch program from its inception in 1989 until 1997
Mark Tedeschi
As a Barrister and a Crown Prosecutor for thirty five years, Mark Tedeschi QC has appeared in some of the most significant criminal cases in Australia. He has been the Senior Crown Prosecutor in New South Wales for fifteen years and is the President of the Australian Association of Crown Prosecutors. He has had many articles published on the law and is the author of a legal text book. He has published many articles on history, genealogy, photography, and horticulture. This is his first book of creative nonfiction.
Jenny Spence
Jenny Spence grew up in country Victoria, and went to university in Melbourne. After a brief period as an English teacher and a year scriptwriting soap operas, Jenny stumbled upon a profession that suited her mismatch of talents and became a technical writer. She and her husband, Bruce Spence, have two grown-up children and two granddaughters.
Janice Simpson
Janice Simpson lives in Maryborough in Victoria's Central Highlands where she is trying to finish her PhD in creative practice as well as the second novel in the O'Leary-Micelli series.
JM Simpson
John Safran
John Safran is an award-winning documentary-maker of provocative and hilarious takes on race, the media, religion and other issues. John first hit TV screens in 1997 on Race Around the World. Both John Safran's Music Jamboree (SBS, 2002) and John Safran vs. God (SBS, 2004) won Australian Film Industry awards for Best Comedy Series and Most Original Concept, and were also nominated for Logie Awards. Other shows include John Safran's Race Relations(ABC-TV, 2009) which was nominated for two awards at the prestigious Rose d'Or Festival in Switzerland and Speaking in Tongues (SBS, 2005-06). John currently co-hosts Sunday Night Safran, a radio talk show on Triple J with cranky but beloved Catholic priest, Father Bob Maguire.
Peter Tonkin
Peter Tonkin grew up in Adelaide and hung out in the arty fringe there, getting himself into bands, cabaret, films, theatre and other funny things. He also played Aussie rules football for a team he would prefer to remain nameless - to protect the guilty. And he wants to assure his readers that during his time as a player he did not attempt to execute any drop kicks, although some of his more adventurous team mates did.
Diane Hester
Diane Hester is a former violinist with the Adelaide Symphony and the Rochester Philharmonic, US. Born in New York, she now lives in Port Lincoln, South Australia with husband Michael. Run To Me is her debut novel and she's currently hard at work on her second – another fast-paced Hitchcockian thriller.
Gary Kemble
Gary Kemble's award-winning short fiction has been published in magazines and anthologies in Australia and abroad, and several of his stories have been republished in 'best of' collections including Year's Best Australian Fantasy and Horror. In 2011 he received an Australia Council New Work grant to write his debut novel, the supernatural thriller Skin Deep. His journalistic career has included stints with local newspapers, national magazines and online publications in Australia and the UK. He is currently the Social Media Coordinator for ABC News.
James Phelps
James Phelps is an award winning senior reporter for the Daily and Sunday Telegraph in Sydney. He began as on overnight police rounds reporter before moving into sport where he became one of Australia's best news breaking rugby league reporters. James became News Australia's Chief National Motorsport's Writer and travelled the world chasing F1 stories as well as becoming Australia's No.1 V8 Supercar reporter. James is also a senior feature writer for the Sunday Telegraph. Following the best selling Dick Johnson: the Autobiography of a True-Blue Aussie Sporting Legend', James has returned to his roots to delve into the criminal underworld with his first crime book: Australia's Hardest Prison; Inside the Walls of Long Bay Jail. James is a twice V8 Supercar media award winner and a former News Awards 'Young Journalist of the Year'' and 'Sport Reporter of the Year''.
J.M. Green
J.M. Green studied professional writing at RMIT. Good Money, her first novel, was shortlisted for the 2014 Victorian Premier's Literary Award for an unpublished manuscript. She lives in Melbourne's western suburbs.
Nathan Besser
Nathan Besser was born in 1981 in Sydney. While attending secondary school he met his future wife Ariela Bard. They now live together in Sydney with their 3 children. Nathan wrote poetry and short fiction from the age of sixteen. After completing high school he worked in various jobs, including as a delivery driver, security guard, clinical trial participant, hotel manager and call centre operator. During this time he wrote for various publications, and had three stories published in the Best Australian Stories collection. After failing to find a publisher for his first novel, he devoted his time solely to business for several years, buying and starting several small businesses. These included a restaurant delivery company, an online alcohol delivery company, a cold chain logistics service and two lingerie stores. Following the birth of his second child, during a short holiday in Japan, he decided to begin writing again. He set to work on what would become Man in the Corner, his first (published) novel, which has also been optioned for film by Simon Baker and Rebecca Rigg. He is currently working on another novel.
Carolyn Beasley
Award-winning writer based in Melbourne, Australia. Non-fiction published both in Australia and abroad. Short stories have won prizes in five national literary competitions. Writing qualifications include a Master of Arts in Writing, a degree in Journalism, and an Associate Diploma of Professional Writing and Editing. Currently completing a PhD in Writing from Swinburne University.
Steve Worland
Steve Worland has worked extensively in film and television in Australia and the USA. He has written scripts for Working Title and Icon Productions, worked in script development for James Cameron's Lightstorm and wrote Fox Searchlight's Bootmen, which won five Australian Film Institute awards.
Matthew Benns
Matthew Bens
Michael Mori
Michael Dante Mori recently retired as a Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Marine Corps after completing his final tour of duty as the Navy-Marine Corps Military Judge in Hawaii. His military career began in 1983 when he enlisted in the Marine Corps at eighteen years of age, completing boot camp at Marine Corps Recruit Depot, Parris Island, South Carolina. In pursuit of his commission as a Marine Corps Officer, he completed Officers Candidate School and obtained a Bachelor of Science degree in Communications from Norwich University, located in Northfield, Vermont. Upon receiving his Commission in May 1991 as a Marine Corps Second Lieutenant, Mori remained in a reserve status to attend Western New England College School of Law in Springfield, Massachusetts, graduating in 1994. After completing the bar examination and admittance to the Bar for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Mori commenced his career as a Marine Corps Officer serving predominantly as prosecutor and defence counsel. In 2003, the United States Department of Defense assigned Mori to the Office of the Chief Counsel for Military Commissions, which was to provide representation to detainees held at the Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Mori became the first Military Lawyer assigned to represent a detainee. Mori has since moved to Melbourne and is working in Shine Lawyers's Social Justice Department, having completed the requirements to obtain his Australian law license.
Simon Haynes
Simon Haynes is the author of the Hal Spacejock, Harriet Walsh and Hal Junior (MG) series. He divides his time between writing fiction and computer software, with the occasional bike ride thrown in for a laugh.
Dorothy Cormack
I am a psychiatric nurse, mother and writer. Born in the country but the city is my home and I like writing stories that use lots of Australian slang within the genre of crime. Recent selection of being runner-up in the inaugural South Australia's Clare Writers' Festival Short Story Competition for 2013 story called Mystery in the Clare Valley.
Ellie Marney
Ellie Marney was born in Brisbane, and has lived in Indonesia, Singapore and India. Now she writes, teaches, talks about kid's literature at libraries and schools, and gardens when she can, while living in a country idyll (actually a very messy wooden house on ten acres with a dog and lots of chickens) near Castlemaine, in north-central Victoria. Her partner and four sons still love her, even though she often forgets things and lets the housework go. Ellie's short stories for adults have won awards and been published in various anthologies. Every Breath is her first novel for young adults.
Kenneth Cook was born in Sydney. Wake In Fright, which drew on his time as a journalist in Broken Hill, was first published in 1961 when Cook was 32. It was published in England and America, translated into several languages, and was a prescribed text in schools. Cook wrote twenty-two books in a variety of genres, and was well known in film...
Tom Howard
Tom Howard was born in Melbourne on 22nd June 1937. After graduating from the University of Melbourne, he did time in the army in Victoria and Queensland. After his term expired, he did a number of stints (starting as clerk and ultimately rising to inspector) in various branches of the Public Service - including the Police Department - in all Australia's mainland states except NSW and the Northern Territory. In 1985 Tom became a successful freelance journalist, specialising in show business topics. He has written numerous articles and interviews published in newspapers and magazines in New York, Paris and London. He also has eleven short stories, three poems and a one act play in print.
Honey Brown
Honey Brown lives in country Victoria with her husband and two children. Her debut novel, Red Queen, was published in 2009 to critical acclaim and won a 2009 Aurealis Award. Her second, much-anticipated novel, The Good Daugher (2010), was longlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award 2011 and shortlisted for the 2011 Barbara Jefferis Award.
H M Brown
Brian Stoddart
Professor Brian Stoddart is an international consultant who works mainly on higher education reform in Asia and the Middle East, and is currently Distinguished Fellow of the Australia India Institute based at the University of Melbourne. He trained as a South Asianist then also became an international authority on sport and culture. His academic career was spent in Australia, Malaysia, Canada and Barbados, and he finished his formal career with a term as Vice-Chancellor and President at La Trobe University in Australia. In addition to his formal work he is a regular contributor to regular and new media as a columnist and commentator.
D.B. Tait
Born and bred in Sydney Australia, D.B. Tait is a life long lover of books in all forms but crime fiction in particular. She worked for many years in the criminal justice system before deciding a tree change was need, so decamped to the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney. Now she writes and works part time in the community sector. Her first full length novel, Cold Deception, will be published by Momentum, the digital first line of Pan Macmillan in March 2015. In another life, she is also erotica writer Keziah Hill and contemporary romance writer Deborah Tait.
Jock Serong
Jock Serong lives and works on the far southwest coast of Victoria. He was a practising lawyer when he wrote Quota and is currently a features writer, and the editor of Great Ocean Quarterly. He is married with four children, who in turn are raising a black dog, a rabbit and an unknown number of guinea pigs.
Greg Barron
Greg was born in the mountain ranges of Northern New South Wales and has also lived in Canada and the Northern Territory. He grew up reading Alistair MacLean, Tom Clancy, Robert Ludlum, Desmond Bagley, Jon Cleary, Wilbur Smith and John Le Carre and dreamed of being a writer from an early age.
He has qualifications in Education and Aquatic Science and has studied Global Terrorism through St Andrew's University, Scotland. He has worked as a librarian, a music teacher, a primary producer, an educator in remote Indigenous communities, and played the guitar semi professionally.
Greg enjoys music, bushwalking, boating, canoeing, reading and travel, both internationally and in Australia. His writing reflects strong interests in political, social and environmental change. He lives on a small farm in Eastern Australia's coastal hinterland with his wife and two sons.
C.S. Boag
The first indication that Charles Boag might have a career in fiction came in 1967 when a short story he wrote, "Aunt Maud" – a macabre tale of incest and madness – was placed third in a Sydney University competition and appeared in the university newspaper, "Honi Soit". But since then, as he put it, "life got in the way" and he concentrated on journalism – general reporting for "The Sydney Morning Herald", feature-writing with "The Bulletin" magazine, a couple of columns (for "Woman's Day" and "The Bulletin"), newspaper editor (Blacktown and Parramatta Suns), and authoring a "History of Arnott's".
Tyson Adams
Tyson started writing after an unfortunate accident with an imagination and a pencil at a young age. Not being allowed to carry out black-ops operations, he instead writes thrilling stories. Tyson has a couple of science degrees, is married with a son and fur-kid and is a vocal proponent of renewable energies and quality whiskey.
Ross Coulthart
Caroline Overington
Caroline Overington is an Australian author and journalist.
She has worked for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald, and is is currently a staff writer for The Weekend Australian Magazine.
Markus Zusak is the author of five books, including the international bestseller, The Book Thief , which spent more than a decade on the New York Times bestseller list, and is translated into more than forty languages – establishing Zusak as one of the most successful authors to come out of Australia.
Ilsa Evans
Raised in Melbourne, ex-RAAF, Ilsa completed a Bachelor of Arts majoring in medieaval history and a PhD on the long-term effects of domestic violence on survivors.
Michael Meehan
Margareta Osborn
Margareta is a 5th generation farmer from Gippsland, rural author and cattle breeder.
John Allin
Renee Otmar
Leslie Falkiner-Rose
Adrian McKinty
Adrian McKinty is an Irish novelist. He was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland in 1968 and grew up in Victoria Council Estate, Carrickfergus, County Antrim. He read law at the University of Warwick and politics and philosophy at the University of Oxford. He moved to the United States in the early 1990s, living first in Harlem, New York and from 2001 onwards Denver, Colorado where he taught high school English and began writing fiction. He currently lives in Melbourne, Australia with his wife and two children.
Kelvin Barry "Kel" Richards is an Australian author, journalist, radio personality and lay Christian. Richards has written a series of crime novels and thrillers for adult readers which includes The Case of the Vanishing Corpse, Death in Egypt and An Outbreak of Darkness.
Margaret Bevege
Margaret is a long-time member of Sisters in Crime Australia, and Partners in Crime Sydney. She is represented in the Queen of Crime anthologies and has self-published the Detective Elizabeth Ludowski series, which is set in Brisbane. Margaret is currently travelling around Australia writing on her laptop.
Adam Shand
Adam Shand is a journalist with twenty years of experience in Australian television, print and online media. As a cadet on The Australian newspaper in teh 1980s, he covered the rise and fall of the entrepreneurs. Adam joined the Nine Network in 1991, reporting for Business Sunday in Sydney and Melbourne, before leaving to wander Africa for three years as a freelance journalist for Nine and other media organisations. Since 1997 he has been an investigative reporter and he is currently working for The Bulletin and Nine's Sunday program. His research on the Melbourne gangland murders was carried out as a joint investigation for The Bulletin and Sunday. Adam also writes on Melbourne crime in his Bluestone column for The Bulletin online.
Brian Priestley
Leigh Redhead
I was born on the eighteenth of November, nineteen seventy-one in Adelaide, to hippy parents. We moved to New Zealand, where my brother was born, then back to Adelaide.
Chloe Hooper
Chloe Hooper attended Lauriston Girls' School before commencing a Bachelor of Arts at Melbourne University. She studied creative writing at New York's Columbia University under a Fulbright Scholarship.
Arthur Veno
Professor Arthur Veno was born in the US and has lived in Australia since 1974. Most recently director of Monash University's Centre for Police and Justice Studies, Veno has studied the clubs for seventeen years. But he's no orderinary academic - he attends club nights, field days and runs, and counts members of the Gypsy Jokers, Hell's Angels and Coffin Cheaters as his friends (they call him the Mad Professor). Veno now grows trees on his farm in rural Victoria, and is a consultant to various groups on human rights and criminal justice issues, as well - of course - as the bikie clubs.
Vincent Varjavandi
Vincent Varjavandi 1968- is a Sydney-based surgeon. His first novel, THE PERFECT SUSPECT, was published in October 2006 by Longueville Media, and distributed by Macmillan Australia
R F Brissenden
Born: 1928 - Died: 1991 R. F. Brissenden was born at Wentworthville, New South Wales, and was educated at Cowra High School and the Universties of Sydney and Leeds. Leaving a tutorship at the University of Melbourne in 1953, he spent the rest of his academic career in Canberra at the Canberra University College (later the Australian National University). Brissenden built a strong reputation as a critic and commentator on Australian and American literature and was highly regarded as a scholar of eighteenth century literature. His wife, Rosemary, is an author in her own right.
Louise Connor
A founding member of Sisters in Crime, Louise has twice won third prize in the Scarlet Stiletto awards. Louise, a former publicist and freelance journalist, is currently the Victorian Secretary of the Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance, which is the union and professional association for media and arts workers.
Colin Bowles
Colin Bowles was born in North London. He moved to Australia in the seventies and worked in advertising. He started writing when his wife was two months pregnant and they had just arrived in Sydney from Perth with nowhere to live. He says it helped focus his mind. He worked as a freelance journalist contributing articles to many magazines, newspapers and periodicals including The Australian, Playboy, Cosmopolitan, The Bulletin, Qantas Airways magazine, San Francisco Chronicle, GH, and She. Columnist for magazines including Gourmet Traveller and Ansett Inflight Magazine. He also wrote for radio and television, while working on his first novel, which was eventually five years in the making. For the last fifteen years he has been a full time novelist, writing as Colin Falconer, with his work published widely in Europe, the UK and the USA, and translated into sixteen languages. He travels regularly to research his novels and in the last two years has completed promotional tours for translations of his novels in Mexico, Turkey, and Romania.
Estelle Blackburn
Estelle is a Perth journalist who spent six years researching and writing a book appropriately named "Broken Lives" which was published in 1999. Estelle exposed an injustice which led to the 2001 and 2005 exonerations of two men convicted of Perth killings in the '60s - the longest-standing convictions to be overturned in Australia. Her unfunded, determined sleuthing unearthed fresh evidence that prompted the Attorney General to allow the men new Appeals after they had lost a combined total of seven Appeals in the '60s. Coming across the story by chance and persisting with it has turned Estelle's life around. From a journalism career with The West Australian, the ABC and the Government Media Office, Estelle has become a justice crusader and author whose memoirs will be published this year.
Gwyn Topham
Gwyn Topham has been travel editor of Guardian Unlimited for five years and recently worked as a news reporter for The Sydney Morning Herald. He wrote this book while in Sydney, watching the ships go by. He now lives in London.
Siobhan Mullany
A Sydney solicitor specialising in criminal law, Siobhan won the Scarlet Stiletto first prize in 1997 for her story 'Floating in a Live Circuit'. Over the years Siobhan has represented clients in murder trials where the facts were more incredible than fiction. The short story is her favourite form and she hopes to submit more stories for publication that are as interesting as her work.
Phyl O'Regan
Residing on the Central Coast of New South Wales, where fishing and growing tomatoes are now the big thing, Phyl is a retired nursing sister. As a writer, however, she was won first prizes for poetry in competitions in Katoomba, Bendigo and Eaglehawk; has written for nursing journals and hospital centenary books; and has had short stories published in anthologies and in the Australian Womens Weekly. Phyl's greatest kick was winning a double at the 2002 Scarlet Stiletto awards. 'What We Do Best' took out the Dorothy Porter award for the Best Crime in Verse and the Pulp Fiction award for Funniest Crime. Phyl is now working on a mystery novel for young adults.
Julie Ogden
Carmel Bird (1940- ), born Launceston, Tasmania, was educated at the University of Tasmania and lived for a period in Europe and the USA before settling in Melbourne. Bird's fiction blends real and surreal, mundane and macabre with inventive irony, reflecting her perception of Tasmania itself as an 'ironic' island, whose picturesque surface masks deep secrets and is haunted by the ghosts of Aborigines and convicts. She has published two novels, Cherry Ripe (1985) and The Bluebird Cafe (1990), and four collections of short stories, Births, Deaths and Marriages (1983), The Woodpecker Toy Fact (1987), Woodpecker Point (1988) and The Common Rat (1993). She has also written a guide for writers, Dear Writer (1988), and edited a collection of short stories, Relations (1991).
Paul Mann
Kirsty Brooks
Daughter of Robert and Claire Brooks, Kirsty was born 17 Dec 1971 in Whyalla. Her family moved to Adelaide when she was four years old. She went to the Wilderness School in Medindie. A freelance writer and editor, Kirsty Brooks has a BA (Journalism) from the University of Adelaide (1994) and an Advanced Diploma of Arts (Professional Writing) from the Adelaide Institute of TAFE (1999) As well as being a full-time author, Kirsty is the director of Driftwood Manuscripts, an assessment and editing agency for writers. She has a Journalism Degree, an Advanced Diploma in Professional Writing and is Chair of the SA Writers' Centre. She has had two books shortlisted for the Ned Kelly Award, Lady Luck in 2003 for Best First Crime Fiction Novel and The Vodka Dialogue in 2004 for Best Crime Fiction Novel.
Hilary Bonney
Hilary Bonney is a Melbourne-based barrister who has had extensive experience in the criminal jurisdiction. She also teaches at the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine and has contributed regularly to several legal publications including the Alternative Law Journal. In Hilary's own words: 'I don't know Matthew or his brothers and sisters, but I could have. I don't know Margaret or Paul, but I may have brushed past them in High Street or at the Prahran Market...' The Wales-King case fascinates her not only professionally, but on a deeply personal level, too.
Charles Miranda
Charles Miranda is senior reporter with Sydney's Daily Telegraph. He and his co-author Angela Kamper have followed the story of their first book My Brother's Keeper from its very beginning.
Vonnie Hughes
Our family were all born in New Zealand and now live in Queensland, the sunshine state of Australia. Nobody else in my family writes, but in the latter part of the 19th century my antecedents published newspapers and were authors. Blood will out, as they say. I've always written - poetry and short stories as a child; then later on in life as our kids grew older I began writing novels, probably to counteract the stultifying boredom of being a legal executive.
Anthony Prince
Anthony Prince grew up in NSW's Northern Rivers district. After his release from prison in the US he returned to Byron Bay and is about to finish a university business degree.
Linda Cockburn
Tasmanian Based author (and somebody else on the sustainability / country journey by the look of the blog).
Helene Young
Helene Young is the author of the Border Watch series. An airline pilot with twenty-two years flying experience, Helene finds inspiration for her suspense stories in the most unlikely places. She's a senior Check and Training Captain with Australia's largest regional airline and flies throughout the east coast. 'I love talking to the locals in places as varied as Weipa, Longreach, or Mildura. Their experiences of everyday life are so very different to most Australians. The landscape they live in makes an ideal setting for mystery and thriller stories. And I have the added bonus of an office with the best view in the world.' In between flights she finds time to write action packed suspense stories involving an airborne coastal surveillance operation guarding Australia. Her second novel, Shattered Sky, was released in Australia on 1st February 2011 by Hachette Australia. Set in North Queensland it's a fast paced thriller that delves into the world of Outlawed Motorcycle Gangs, International Organized Crime Syndicates and their role in the sex-slave trade. Her first novel Wings of Fear, under its original title of Border Watch, recently won the RWA Romantic Book of the Year Award 2011 in the 'Romantic Elements' category. The same novel recently won the ARRA award for Favourite Australian Romantic Suspense. As an unpublished manuscript, it was a finalist in the prestigious RWAmerica Golden Heart Award in 2008. She's currently working on the third novel in the loosely linked Border Watch Series.
Helen Hodgman
Helen Hodgman (born 27 April 1945 in Aberdeen, Scotland) is an Australian novelist. She won the 1978 Somerset Maugham Award for her novel Jack and Jill. She also won the 1989 Christina Stead Fiction Prize for the novel Broken Words. Her remaining works include Waiting for Matindi, Passing Remarks, Ducks, Blue Skies and The Bad Policeman.
Hodgman, Helen
Nicholas Hasluck
Nicholas Hasluck was born in Canberra in 1942 and later studied law at the University of Western Australia (1963) and Oxford (1966). After completing his studies he worked briefly in Fleet Street in London as an editorial assistant before returning to Australia in 1967 to work as a barrister. He was deputy chairman of the Australia Council 1978-82 and was made AM. His father Sir Paul Hasluck was a minister in the Federal Government under Robert Menzies, and was later appointed Governor-General of Australia. On 1st May 2000 Nicholas Hasluck was appointed as a justice of the Supreme Court of Western Australia.
Nicholas Jose
Nicholas Jose was born in 1952, in London, to Australian parents. The following year his parents returned to Australia with him. He grew up in Broken Hill, Traralgon, Perth and mostly Adelaide, South Australia. He studied at the Australian National University, Canberra, and Magdalen College, Oxford. He has travelled extensively in Europe and Asia. From 1986 to 1990 he worked in Shanghai and Beijing where he was Cultural Counsellor at the Australian Embassy from 1987-1990. He has been based in Sydney since 1991. From 2002 to 2005 was was President of Sydney PEN. He currently holds the Chair of Creative Writing at the University of Adelaide
Stuart Coupe
Stuart Coupe is a journalist, editor, writer and book reviewer in Australia with fingers in a lot of pies. While a student in Adelaide, Stuart Coupe co-edited the fanzine Roadrunner, an experience that led to further work as a freelance writer. He consolidated his career in the music industry as manager of acts such as the Hoodoo Gurus and Paul Kelly. He has since worked as a promoter, record label director, freelance writer, retailer, editor and author. Coupe's writing on the music industry has appeared regularly in Australian newspapers and magazines.
Shane Maloney
After graduating in Asian history and politics at the Australian National University, Shane Maloney had the usual assortment of ragtag jobs before turning to literature. When that didn't work either, he became a full-time writer. At various times he has been a booking agent for rock bands, the promotions manager for Melbourne public radio station 3RRR, public relations director for the Boy Scouts Association, an arts bureaucrat for state and local government, general manager of the Melbourne Comedy Festival, cultural director for Melbourne's bid to host the 1996 Olympics and, finally, a swimming pool lifeguard. Maloney, the award-winning author of the Murray Whelan series of comic thrillers, is one of Australia's most popular novelists. Shane's novels have been published in North America, Germany, Finland, UK, France, and Japan. They include Stiff, The Brush-Off, Nice Try, The Big Ask and Something Fishy. Shane lives in Melbourne. Stiff and The Brush off have been turned into television movies starring David Wenham as Murray Whelan.
Mary-Rose MacColl
Mary-Rose MacColl (1961-) grew up and lives in Brisbane. She has a degree in journalism and was the first graduate of the University of Queensland's Master of Arts in Creative Writing. She has worked as a cadet journalist , assistant nurse and photocopier operator before spending 15 years in higher education as an administrator and corporate writer. Mary-Rose teaches writing part-time and chaired the 1998 Brisbane Writer's Festival. Her first novel, No Safe Place, was the 1995 runner-up in the Australian/Vogel Literary Award.
Frederick Guilhaus
Frederick Guilhaus was born in Gelsenkirchen, West Germany. After receiving a Bachelor of Arts degree, a Diploma of Education, a Master of Business Administration degree and Doctor of Philosophy degree, he worked as an academic and as a managing director.
Jack Marx
Jackson Gregory Marx (born John Marr, 1965), known as Jack Marx, is an Australian journalist and author. He was born in Maitland, New South Wales and is the second youngest of four children.
Greg Flynn
Greg Flynn is a scriptwriter, foreign correspondent and radio newsreader. The Berlin Cross is his debut novel.
Wayne Grogan
Wayne Grogan was born in Sydney in 1953. He was a member of the Waterside Workers Federation for sixteen years. He won a Deakin University Vice-Chancellor's Prize for creative writing and was runner-up in the Henry Lawson Short Story Award. Junkie Pilgrim is his first novel. He lives with his wife and children in Sydney and works as an antiquarian book dealer while writing his next novel.
Bernie Matthews
Bernie Matthews is a convicted bank robber and prison escapee who has served time for armed robbery and prison escapes in NSW (1969-1980) and Queensland (1996-2000). During his periods of incarceration Bernie Matthews studied journalism and received scholarships to study as an external student at the University of Southern Queensland. His insider's account of Brenden Abbott's escape from Sir David Longlands Correctional Centre, "The Day Cassidy won the Cup" is published in Justice in the Deep North: A Historical Perspective of Crime and Punishment in Queensland." DNA and the Justice Game" was published in the 2004 winter edition of The Griffith Review-Making Perfect Bodies. In the 2004 Queensland Media Awards Bernie Matthews won the 'Most Outstanding Journalism Student-All Media Award' with The Crime and Prison Movie Genre Showcase Only Rare True Success and backed up to win 'The Best Online/News Wire Report (Electronic Media)' for Abuse Within Prisons makes Prisoners More Violent Upon Release.
Malcolm Brown
Malcolm, a journalist with the Sydney Morning Herald for over twenty-five years, is the general editor and author of over half the chapters. He lives in Ermington, Sydney. Additional contributors include award-winning journalists such as Ken Blanch, Stephen Downes, Bill Hitchings, Bernie Lagan, Ken Longworth and Gary McKay, each selected for their in-depth knowledge of the disasters concerned.
Max Farrell-Whelan
Max Farrell-Whelan just finished his doctorate in visual perception, an area of psychology. He lives in Sydney, Australia.
Geesche Jacobsen
Geesche Jacobsen is the author of "Abandoned - the sad story of Dianne Brimble". She is a journalist and currently works as the Crime Editor for the Sydney Morning Herald.
Noel Mealey
Stuart Black
Stuart Black was born in Sydney and attended school in Sydney and London. During his teens he developed a taste for playing and writing music but in his twenties realised that passion alone wasn't going to pay the bills. So, after graduating from university, he started working for a large media company. A few years of data analysis later, it was time for a move into the fast-paced world of advertising. Despite the late nights engaged in the battle between commercialism and creativity (or perhaps because of them), he found himself waking up with the drive to pursue a new dream, writing adult fiction. His advertising career took him to London and beyond and even provided the occasional opportunity to perform in dimly lit European piano bars when the business meetings were over. And it familiarised him with a world that would later form the backdrop to his first published novel, Shallow Water.
Pat Flower
FLOWER, PATRICIA MARY BRYSON (1914-1977), crime novelist and television playwright, was born on 23 February 1914 at Ramsgate, Kent, England. She emigrated to Australia at fourteen. Published fifteen crime novels 1958-76, many with (terrible) flower puns in their titles. She worked for the New Theatre League, was a copywriter, and also wrote for radio, tv and film. Her novel Fiends of the Family was dramatised by ABC TV and won an Awgie award. Her early novels with Inspector Swinton have been compared to Maigret, but her later works are perhaps the best psychothrillers produced in Australia. She committed suicide in 1977. Bibliography Inspector Swinton series Wax Flowers for Gloria 1958 Goodbye Sweet William 1959 A Wreath of Water-Lilies 1960 One Rose Less 1961 Hell for Heather 1962 Term of Terror 1963 Fiends of the Family 1966 Hunt the Body 1968 Cobweb 1972 Cat's Cradle 1973 Odd Job 1974 Slyboots 1974 Vanishing Point 1975 Crisscross 1976 Shadow Show 1976
Joy Dettman
Joy Dettman was born in Echuca in Victoria and spent her early years in small country towns in NSW and Victoria. She now lives in Melbourne. A mother of four, she is a full-time writer and author of several award-winning stories. Her first novel Mallawindy was a huge success, and was followed by highly acclaimed novels Jacaranda Blue, Goose Girl, Yesterday's Dust and The Seventh Day.
Darren Goodsir
Martin Long
Martin Long's career has reflected his two main interests - writing and music. He studied at the New South Wales Conservatorium of Music and the University of Sydney before becoming a journalist - a music and film critic, feature writer, features editor and leader writer. He has pursued musicological studies as a hobby and has published work on Elizabethan and Jacobean music.
Anne Infante
Anne Infante is an Australian author, singer and songwriter. Based in Brisbane, she was born in Sydney and raised in Papua New Guinea. She produced her first full-length novel when she was twelve. As an author, Anne has had five popular crime novels published by Collins Crime Club. Ulverscroft released three of these in large print and two were serialised in Australian Woman's Day in 1991 and 1993. Saga Book Publishers released her first mainstream novel, Escape from the Past, in July 1997 and an excerpt appeared in New Idea Magazine. She has had short stories published in CrimeWriters Queensland anthologies as well as Australian Women's Weekly and Australian Woman's Day. The Queensland Writers Centre published her article Crime Isn't Easy Anymore in their December 1996 newsletter Writing Queensland. Anne has presented numerous talks and workshops on the elements of crime writing and fiction writing generally to writing groups, libraries and book clubs, including the Queensland Writers Centre.
Avon Lovell
Avon Lovell was born in 1945 and is a history graduate of the University of Tasmania. He is a publisher with experience in investigative journalism on metropolitan newspapers in Hobart, Adelaide, and Sydney. He has owned his own suburban newspaper in Perth, Western Australia. As an editor and publisher he has produced many Australian books.
Susanna Lobez
Jaye Ford
Jaye Ford is a former journalist, who worked in print, radio and television for twelve years. She was Australia's first female presenter of a national sports show, hosting Sport Report on SBS in 1988-89. Later, she fronted evening news on regional television and ran her own public relations business.
Alex Hutchinson is a prize-winning writer whose stories and articles have appeared in Australia, England and America. Born in 1976 he was raised in deepest Brunswick, although he has recently fled to North Melbourne. He has a masters degree in English and has taught Creative Writing at Melbourne University.
Paul Conroy
Sandra Lee is the author of three non-fiction books, Beyond Bad: The Life And Crimes Of Katherine Knight, Australia's Hannibal, The Promise: An Iraqi Mother's Desperate Flight To Freedom, both published by Random House in 2002 and 2003 respectively, and 18 Hours: The true story of an SAS war hero about Jock Wallace's fight to survive against al Qaeda in Afghanistan, published in 2006 by HarperCollins. Beyond Bad has been sold into the UK market and was published in April 2004 under the title, Kathy the Cannibal. Sandra lives in Sydney and is currently back page columnist for The Sunday Telegraph newspaper.
J M Calder
Mark Henshaw
Mark Henshaw has lived in France, Germany, Yugoslavia and the United States. He currently lives in Canberra. His first novel Out of the Line of Fire (1988), won the FAW Barbara Ramsden Award and the NBC New Writers Award. It was also shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award and the Age Book of the Year Award. Out of the Line of Fire was one of the biggest selling Australian literary novels of the decade, and is being republished in the Text Classics series.
Alex Hammond
Alex Hammond was born in South Africa and emigrated to Australia with his family as a child. He graduated with an Arts/Law degree from the University of Melbourne and worked for several Melbourne law firms. Blood Witness is his first novel.
Patricia Kristensen
Patricia Kristensen is a qualified lawyer and mother of five, living in Victoria, Australia.
Luke Preston
Luke spent most of his twenties as a freelance writer and listening to rock 'n roll. He drinks heavily on occasion, is a half decent musician and his idea of a good time involves a jukebox designed to bleed ears. Luke's work has been recognised by The Inside Film Awards, MTV and The ATOM Awards. He writes in cafes, bars and in parking lots on the back of old fuel receipts and cigarette packets. He doesn't believe in writers block or in the magic bullet theory and his favourite album is Exile on Main Street. Luke's writing is as much influenced by AC/DC and Johnny Cash as it is by Richard Stark and Raymond Chandler. He is undertaking a Master of Screenwriting at the Victorian College of the Arts and has absolutely no intention of moving to a shack in the middle of nowhere. He likes bad traffic, noisy neighbours, cheap beer, loud bars and has been occasionally known to howl at the moon.
Andrew Fraser
Andrew Fraser had his first book published in 2007, a revealing insight into his career, criminals and the prison world from someone who has seen both sides of the law. Andrew blows the whistle on the sorry state of our prison system and investigates how successive governments have played the law-and-order card without regard to the appalling outcomes. Andrew spent 30 years as a high-profile criminal lawyer representing among others, Alan Bond, the notorious underworld Moran family, killer Dennis Allen and footballer Jimmy Krakouer, among others.
Liam Houlihan
Liam Houlihan is a multi-award winning journalist and former lawyer. He has reported from New York (for the NY Post), Washington DC (briefly in the White House Press Pool), from Sri Lanka after the Boxing Day tsunami, from Singapore for Mick Gatto's pursuit of missing Opes Prime money, and around the nation. He is Crime Reporter with the Sunday Herald Sun whose police and underworld exclusives are regularly syndicated around the nation.
Fin J Ross
Fin divides her time between cats and writing. As the owner of a boarding cattery on the beautiful Gippsland Lakes, the former often takes precedence – until the writing takes over. When (also) not working part-time as a journalist (an actual paid job), her days are spent feeding, grooming and cleaning up after cats. In return she gets plenty of blood-pressure lowering furry-purry hugs.
Noleen Jordan
Noleen Jordan spent twenty years in operations management and strategic sourcing for the entertainment, retail, and manufacturing industries. Now retired, she focuses on traveling and writing. Her love of travel gave her the opportunity to experience many different cultures, providing her with knowledge that runs through both Norfolk and her crime thriller, Shwedagon. She lives in Sydney, Australia, with her husband. They have three grown children and six grandchildren.
Nikesh Murali
Nikesh Murali's work (which includes comics, poems and short stories) has appeared in more than 100 publications worldwide. His poems have been translated into Spanish, Italian and Portuguese. He won the DWL Short Story Prize in 2012 and the Commonwealth Short Story Prize for the Asian region in 2011. His poetry was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2007. He has received honourable mentions for the Katha Short Story Prize twice and has been nominated twice for Townsville Arts Award in Writing. He completed his Masters in Journalism from Griffith University for which he was awarded the Griffith University Award for Academic Excellence in 2005, and his Masters in Teaching from James Cook University and a Bachelors degree in English Literature and World History from University of Kerala. Nikesh works as a communications professional in the corporate world and is studying law at Queensland University of Technology.
Maris Morton
Maris Morton came to writing late, with her prize-winning debut novel A Darker Music, published after she had accumulated experience in jobs ranging from cooking for shearers, teaching, the public service, arts administration, finally retiring as the director of a public art gallery in 1999. Two decades of living in country Western Australia has provided the background for much of her writing. At present, she lives among the rainforests of northern New South Wales, working on a new novel to the accompaniment of a symphony of birdsong.
Dido Butterworth
Nothing is known of Miss Dido Butterworth, curator of worms (retired). Museum records contain no employee of that name, though there is speculation that the name is a pseudonym for Hans Schmetterling, curator of worms (1936–55). Tim Flannery, author of several works of non-fiction, was curator of mammals at the Sydney Museum 1984–99.
Peter Carey was born in Australia in 1943. He was educated at the local state school until the age of eleven and then became a boarder at Geelong Grammar School. He was a student there between 1954 and 1960 — after Rupert Murdoch had graduated and before Prince Charles arrived. In 1961 he studied science for a single unsuccessful year at Monash University. He was then employed by an advertising agency where he began to receive his literary education, meeting Faulkner, Joyce, Kerouac and other writers he had previously been unaware of. He was nineteen For the next thirteen years he wrote fiction at night and weekends, working in many advertising agencies in Melbourne, London and Sydney. After four novels had been written and rejected The Fat Man in History — a short story collection — was published in 1974. This slim book made him an overnight success. From 1976 Carey worked one week a month for Grey Advertising, then, in 1981 he established a small business where his generous partner required him to work only two afternoons a week. Thus between 1976 and 1990, he was able to pursue literature obsessively. It was during this period that he wrote War Crimes, Bliss, Illywhacker, Oscar and Lucinda. Illywhacker was short listed for the Booker Prize. Oscar and Lucinda won it. Uncomfortable with this success he began work on The Tax Inspector. In 1990 he moved to New York where he completed The Tax Inspector. He taught at NYU one night a week. Later he would have similar jobs at Princeton, The New School and Barnard College. During these years he wrote The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith, Jack Maggs, and True History of the Kelly Gang for which he won his second Booker Prize. He collaborated on the screenplay of the film Until the End of the World with Wim Wenders. In 2003 he joined Hunter College as the Director of the MFA Program in Creative Writing. In the years since he has written My Life as a Fake, Theft, His Illegal Self and Parrot and Oliver in America (shortlisted for 2010 Man Booker Prize).
Roland Fishman
Roland Fishman has been a journalist and columnist for The Sydney Morning Herald, Good Weekend and The Financial Review. In 1992 he founded The Writers' Studio, drawing on his own career as a writer, as well as his experiences traveling around the world learning the art and craft of writing from bestselling authors and elite teachers. For nearly twenty years, he has personally guided thousands of people through the creative process at The Writers' Studio using his unique step-by-step process
Sandi Wallace
Sandi is a crime writing personal trainer who lives in the Dandenong Ranges outside Melbourne. Sandi wrote her first book at the age of six and started inventing songs (in the shower) around then too. A steady diet, also from an early age, of all types of mysteries led to a grown-up addiction to crime fiction in film and print; and to dreams of becoming a crime writer. Sandi's short story 'Silk Versus Sierra' won the Best Investigative Prize in the 2013 Scarlet Stiletto Awards; she was longlisted in the 2013 Ned Kelly Awards Sandra Harvey Short Story Award; and was a finalist in the 2012 Cutthroat Journal Rick DeMarinis Short Story Contest. Sandi also writes a regular health and fitness column. Stints as banker, paralegal, cabinetmaker, office manager, executive assistant, personal trainer and journalist all provide inspiration and fodder for Sandi's stories. She's convinced if she hadn't turned to writing, she would have been a police detective. Sandi lives in the beautiful Melbourne hills with her husband and furry family.
Terry L Probert
Terry L Probert tells yarns, he always has. Unable to find a unique piece of writing to suit a story telling project for deaf children, he tapped out 'Wurrigi the warrior without ears', a spark that ignited the fiction writer's flame and, fanned by encouragement from those who read it, his passion to write a longer work grew.
Poppy Gee
Poppy Gee was born in Launceston, Tasmania in 1977. She spends every summer with her family at their shack in the Bay of Fires. She has worked as a journalist, editor and book reviewer and currently teaches journalism and creative writing. Poppy lives in Queensland with her husband and two beautiful children. She has nearly completed her next novel, another literary thriller set in the Tasmanian ski village Ben Lomond.
Steve Lewis arrived in Canberra in late 1992, and has been tormenting the nation's political elite ever since. He worked for the Australian Financial Review for fifteen years before joining the Australian as chief political reporter, and since 2007 has been breaking news and causing mischief as national political correspondent for News Limited's big-selling metropolitan dailies - the Daily Telegraph, Herald Sun, Courier-Mail and Advertiser.
A.B. Patterson
A. B. Patterson is an Australian writer who knows first-hand about corruption, power, crime and sex. He was a Detective Sergeant in the WA Police, working in paedophilia and vice, and later he was a Chief Investigator with the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption. Born in Sydney, he grew up in Europe, returning to Australia as an adult and commencing his career in law enforcement, and other government agencies.
Martin Chambers
Martin Chambers was born in Perth, the son of two journalists. He is married and has two adult daughters. He has worked as a biologist, a tour guide, a whitewater rafting guide, a lab assistant, a publican, a kayak designer, a ferry skipper and in mineral exploration. Between episodes of cycling, kayaking, sailing or travel, he writes.
Tasmanian author Robert Cox writes mainly in two genres: history and short fiction. Originally considering himself a journeyman, a writer by trade, he has had stints as advertising copywriter, public relations consultant, government communications manager, book reviewer, magazine journalist and editor, and newspaper reporter and subeditor. During a five-year spell as a freelancer, he wrote anything and everything from documentary film scripts to verses for greeting cards. His real interests, however, were more literary, and through all those incarnations he continued to write and publish short stories, poetry, feature articles, and essays, producing work that has been commended in national short story competitions and several times anthologised. He has been the recipient of an Arts Tasmania literary grant. No longer a jobbing hack, he now writes full time. A Compulsion to Kill is his sixth book, and he is co-editing reminiscences of the celebrated Tasmanian poet Gwen Harwood as Behind the Masks: Gwen Harwood Remembered by her Friends (Ginninderra Press). His other current project is a biography of the seminal Tasmanian resistance fighter Kikatapula, whom he calls 'perhaps Australia's most influential indigenous warrior of the colonial period'. Robert Cox lives an eremitic life in a rural valley in southern Tasmania.
Chris Flynn
Chris Flynn is the author of A Tiger in Eden (2012), which was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Book Prize. He edited 'Terra Australis: Four Stories from Aboriginal Australian Writers' in McSweeney's 41, and his writing has appeared in Griffith Review, Meanjin, Paris Review Daily, Monster Children, Smith Journal, Age, Australian, Big Issue and many other publications.
K.A. Bedford
K.A. Bedford is the author of Orbital Burn, Eclipse, Hydrogen Steel, Time Machines Repaired While-U-Wait and Paradox Resolution. He has twice won the Aurealis Award for Best Australian Science Fiction Novel, been shortlisted for the Philip K. Dick Award, and in 2013 his novel Paradox Resolution was joint winner of the Tin Duck Award for Best Western Australian Professional Long Written Work. K.A. Bedford has been writing since he was a little kid, but started writing seriously when he was 14. His first novel, which was his first professional sale, was published in 2003, when he was 40. The lesson here, he says, is 'stick with it'. K.A. Bedford attended Curtin and Murdoch universities, where he studied writing, theatre and philosophy. Awards Western Australian Science Fiction Association Tin Duck Award (Shortlisted, 2009)Philip K. Dick Award (Shortlisted 2009)Aurealis Award for Best Australian Science Fiction Novel (Winner 2005, 2008)Aurealis Award for Best Australian Science Fiction Novel (Shortlisted 2003, 2006)
Candice Fox
Candice Fox is the middle child of a large, eccentric family from Sydney's western suburbs composed of half-, adopted and pseudo siblings. The daughter of a parole officer and an enthusiastic foster-carer, Candice spent her childhood listening around corners to tales of violence, madness and evil as her father relayed his work stories to her mother and older brothers. As a cynical and trouble-making teenager, her crime and gothic fiction writing was an escape from the calamity of her home life. She was constantly in trouble for reading Anne Rice in church and scaring her friends with tales from Australia's wealth of true crime writers. Bankstown born and bred, she failed to conform to military life in a brief stint as an officer in the Royal Australian Navy at age eighteen. At twenty, she turned her hand to academia, and taught high school through two undergraduate and two postgraduate degrees. Candice lectures in writing at the University of Notre Dame, Sydney, while undertaking a PhD in literary censorship and terrorism.
Andy Muir
Andy Muir has worked as a researcher and script coordinator for television shows such as Underbelly, MDA and All Saints. He also has writing credits on Home and Away, Neighbours and Silver Sun. Andy has written material for Thank God You're Here.
Debbie Malone
Debbie Malone is an acclaimed spirit medium who has assisted police departments across Australia in missing persons and murder investigations for over two decades. Her extraordinary gifts - she is a psychic and clairvoyant as well as a medium - enable her to receive visions from both the living and the dead from the past, present and future, and to convey messages to bereaved families from their departed loved ones.
Keith Moor
Keith Moor is Editor of the Melbourne Herald Sun's Insight investigative unit. Formerly the Melbourne Herald's Chief Police Reporter and Canberra political correspondent, Keith won the Walkley Award for news reporting in 1986 for his coverage of the kidnap of two Victorian aid workers in Pakistan. He became the Herald Sun's first Chief of Staff when the newspaper was formed in 1990, then its News Editor and Managing Editor (News) in 1995. Keith's journalistic awards include the Melbourne Press Club Quill Award for best print feature in 2000, News Limited Newsbreaker of the Year award in 2004, News Limited Specialist Writer of the Year Award in 2007 and the 2007 Quill Award for the best deadline report in any medium for his coverage of the arrest of Tony Mokbel. He was born in Newcastle upon Tyne in England.
Sara Foster
Sara Foster is the bestselling author of four psychological suspense novels, ALL THAT IS LOST BETWEEN US, SHALLOW BREATH, BENEATH THE SHADOWS, and COME BACK TO ME. Born and raised in the UK, Sara worked for a time in the HarperCollins fiction department in London, before turning her hand to freelance editing, and writing in her spare time. It wasn't until 2007 that Sara decided to pursue her dream of getting published, and she took time out from editing to finish her first book. COME BACK TO ME was published in Australia in 2010 and reached the Sydney Morning Herald top ten Australian bestsellers list. Her second book, BENEATH THE SHADOWS, reached No. 4 on the Australian Sunday Telegraph bestsellers list, and was published in the USA and Germany. Her third novel, SHALLOW BREATH, was long listed for the 2013 Davitt Award. Sara is very proud to have been one of the original editors of the bestselling Kids' Night In series, which has been raising money for the charity War Child since 2003. In 2004 she moved to Western Australia, where she lives with her husband and young daughters.
Mark Brandi
Mark Brandi has been published, broadcast and shortlisted in journals and competitions both locally and overseas. Originally from Marche, growing up Italian in a rural Victorian town influences much of his work. Mark graduated from a criminal justice degree and his career includes roles as a policy advisor and project officer in the Department of Justice, before changing direction and deciding to write. Mark's writing has appeared in THE GUARDIAN, THE AGE, the BIG ISSUE, and is often broadcast on Radio National. He is the winner of the 2016 UK Crime Writers' Association Debut Dagger for his first novel, WIMMERA, which he developed during two residential fellowships at Varuna.
Grantlee Kieza
Award winning journalist Grantlee Kieza has held senior editorial positions at The Daily Telegraph, The Sunday Telegraph and The Courier Mail. He is a Walkley Award finalist and the author of twelve acclaimed books, including the recent bestsellers Bert Hinkler: The Most Daring Man in the World, Sons of the Southern Cross and Monash.
Bill Hosking
Born in Broken Hill, William 'Bill' Hosking became a clerk in the Petty Sessions branch of the Department of the Attorney-General and of Justice in 1954, serving in courthouses all over New South Wales. In June 1961, at the age of twenty-three, Bill embarked on a different career path when Jack Mannix, the Labor member for Liverpool and Minister of Justice, appointed him as his acting private secretary. In 1965, the new Minister of Justice, John Maddison, retained Bill on his personal staff. Soon, he became assistant private secretary to SIr Robert Askin, the Premier of New South Wales. Within months, Wal Fife, Assistant Minister for Education and soon-to-be Minister of Mines, selected Bill as his private secretary. In 1970, Bill commenced practice at the private bar in Chalfont Chambers, which Jack Mannix had once occuped. Mr Mannix had loaned Bill his wig and gown to wear when he was called to the Bar in 1968, and gave them to him when he joined Chalfont Chambers. In 1973, he became a public defender and in 1980 he was appointed Queen's Counsel and Deputy Senior Public Defender. As a leading QC appearing in a large number of notable trials, and as a District Court judge from 1987 to 2000, Bill has garnered some fascinating stories which bring to life the drama of the courtroom and lively exchanges of the participants. In 2014 Bill was appointed as a reserve judge of the County Court of Victoria, continuing his love of the law and justice.
Desmond L Kelly
I live on a subtropical island in Moreton Bay about an hour from Brisbane, Australia. It's a nice place with good people. Born in the Blue Mountains of Australia, I was whipped off to New Zealand at the age of four, after my mother had one row too many with her mother-in-law. They were a pair of feisty women. I was 77 years of age before I returned to live in the country of my origin. I am therefore, Australian by birth and a New Zealander by culture, a fearsome state of confusion which has led me to believe that literature is my safest nationality. Did I come back to Australia to live out of yearning for the place? Not really. We, my wife and I, came here because our three surviving children had come here to live and work and because the climate is warmer. I trained as a geologist, but that was a wrong turn. I became a school teacher, which I loved, and followed for just over 20 years at primary, secondary and tertiary levels until at 49 I became a professional actor working in film, television, stage and radio on both sides of the Tasman Sea. All that time I wrote. I'm not very good at doing two things at once so writing came a poor second to the job and providing for a family, but now – now I am retired and I can follow my heart's desire – now, I can write every day. And I do. I live with my patient wife in a lovely little house on the island and do my best to enjoy life.
Shannon O'Leary
Shannon O'Leary is a prolific writer and performer. She is the author of several books of poetry and children's stories, and she has won many awards for song-writing. Shannon has acted and directed on the stage and on Australian national TV, and she runs her own production company. She has numerous graduate and post-graduate degrees in education, music, and science. She is a teacher and academic, has five children with her deceased former husband, and lives with her longtime partner in Sydney, Australia. Her memoir The Blood on My Hands was published in February 2016 and is available for sale on Amazon and Createspace. Readers can connect with Shannon on Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads.
Lois Murphy
Lois Murphy has travelled widely, most recently spending six years exploring Australia in a homemade 4WD truck, workling mainly in small or remote towns, before settling in Darwin for a number of years. She has won a handful of prizes for her writing, including the Northern Territory Literary Award and the Sisters in Crime Best New Talent prize.
Juliet Wills
Juliet Wills worked in television news for more than twenty years. At Channel Nine in Perth she was the Executive Producer of Perth's A Current Affair and Senior Producer of the Afternoon News. She has also worked for the ABC, Channel Ten and Channel Seven.
Jarad Henry
Jarad Henry is a prolific reader and writer of hard-boiled police drama. His short stories have been published in numerous journals, magazines and online, including the ABC's "Dust on My Shoes" collection. Having worked in the criminal justice system for the past ten years, Head Shot showcases the author's profound knowledge of the underworld. Weaving together the chaotic stories of maverick detective Rubens McCauley and rookie constable Cassie Withers, Henry paints a brutal and honest portrait of police life at the raw end.
Freda Ellis
Freda Myers Ellis was born and educated in Yorkshire, England. She married Joseph Ellis and had three children. Freda taught in schools in England and Australia after emigrating with her husband and son in 1969. Freda now resides on Queensland's Gold Coast and has had several poems published and also broadcast. She is a member of Gold Coast Writers
Emma Tom
Emma Tom is an award-winning Australian journalist, author, broadcaster and musician. She has an opinion on just about anything but is particularly interested in ethics, feminism, sex, religion, democracy, gender, Socrates, postmodernism, human nature, East Asian politics, terrorism, television vampires and the delightful disgustingness of dogs. In general, people either really love or really hate Emma Tom's work. The former have given her a bunch of prizes for her books and her journalism. The latter enjoy e-mailing her at regular intervals to call her talent non-existent, her humour gutter-like and her teeth monstrously oversized. These are all things she has learned to live with.
Tony Reeves
Tony Reeves is an investigative journalist of many years standing. He first became interested in Lennie McPherson more than thirty years ago and has been following the miasma of corruption that has hung above Sydney ever since. He has worked as a journalist with the ABC, Nation Review, the Sunday Telegraph and the Sunday Australian, all the time peeling away deep layers of untruth to expose the real workings of Australia's underworld. His reporting helped bring about the Moffitt Royal Commission into organised crime. He now enjoys a quieter life in Brisbane.
Mike Richards first became involved in the Ryan case as the leader of student protests against Ryan's execution. He started his working life as a journalist with The Age, and his later career has involved him as an academic, government adviser, management consultant, and media executive. In the late 1990s he was assistant publisher and deputy CEO of The Age, after a period as associate editor and columnist. Dr Richards holds a PhD in political science from the University of Melbourne, is a fellow of the Australian Institute of Company Directors, and lives in Melbourne.
Marion Halligan
Marion Halligan is an award-winning novelist, essayist and short story writer. She has been shortlisted for the Dublin IMPAC Prize, the Miles Franklin Award and the Nita B. Kibble. She has also received the Age Book of the Year, the ACT Book of the Year, the Nita B. Kibble Award, the Steele Rudd Award, the Braille Book of the Year, the 3M Talking Book of the Year, and the Geraldine Pascall prize for critical writing. The Fog Garden was shortlisted in the Queensland Premier's Literary Award. The Point, her latest novel, was shortlisted The Courier Mail Book of the Year Award.
Larry Writer
A former editor, senior journalist and London bureau chief for Australian Consolidated Press and Time Inc Magazines, Larry currently freelances for The Australian Weekend Magazine and Wish magazine. Writer lives in Sydney with his wife Carol, sons Tom and Casey and labrador Maddie. Other passions are swimming, reading, music, movies and the Sydney Roosters. He plays the ukelele - badly.
Titania Hardie
Titania Hardie is a serious student of esoteria. Creating the riddles for The Rose Labyrinth, she drew on her love of literature, history, music and myth, as well as her far-reaching knowledge of folklore and divination. She has first class honours degrees in psychology and English, and was awarded the Chatterton bursary for post-graduate study at Bristol University, where she is currently completing her MA on the Romantic Poets. While she has written many non-fiction books and children's stories, The Rose Labyrinth is Titania's first novel, and is a fascinating departure from her previous work. Like Lucy, the novel's hero, she was born and educated in Sydney, Australia, but for many years has lived in Somerset with her husband and two daughters.
Richard Evans is a Melbourne writer and historian. He has worked as a journalist on newspapers and legal magazines, and was a lecturer in journalism at RMIT. His work has appeared in HQ, Quadrant, The Age, Overland and The Republican, and been broadcast on Radio National. His research into the Pyjama Girl mystery featured on the ABC TV program Rewind.
David Sale
David Sale is an Australian-based author and television scriptwriter. He has been a contributor to many TV drama series, provided special material for Australia's leading entertainers, and has worked as producer, director, actor and journalist. He is perhaps best known as creator, writer and script editor of the highly influential television soap opera Number 96. Before that, he was Executive Producer of the satirical weekly comedy The Mavis Bramston Show. Both of these series were highly popular in their day and still rank amongst the most famous and influential programs to have appeared on Australian television. His first two novels, written between TV assignments, were Come to Mother and The Love Bite. These were published in London in hardback in the 1970s and both were bought by Hollywood. Television interrupted this flow of books, but in the 1990s Sale resumed his career as an author.
Camilla Noli
Camilla Noli lives on the Central Coast of NSW with her husband and children. She is a graduate of the Varuna Writing Program in Sydney's Blue Mountains and this is her first novel.
Janis Tait
Janis Tait won the Sisters in Crime Kill City 2nd prize for her story The Judge. She has won several national and local short story awards and last year her book about her son's suicide, Living Death, was published in the US. "Writing is the most ghastly of occupations. But once the bug bites, it becomes a ghastly passion!" she said.
Terence J McLernon
Terence J McLernon is the fifth generation of his family to enter the Police Force, a record in Australia yet to be surpassed. After a highly trained career in the Royal Australian Air Force, Terry joined the Wallopers. As a mature man, he was deeply unimpressed by the Cult of the Copper whereby the power to do good was perverted to private purposes of commerce and control. He views the sub-strata of corrupt officials and police as being The Fifth Estate, the new 'untouchables'.
Murray Waldren
Murray Waldren has been at The Australian newspaper for the past 15 years. His literary profiles, interviews, reviews and columns appear in The Weekend Australian and The Weekend Australian Magazine, as does his other journalism. He writes the Literary Liaisons website and has been on The Australian/Vogels Awards judging panel. His publications include To Build A Bridge (Currency Press, 1997), Future Tense (Allen & Unwin, 1999, as editor) and Dining Out with Mr Lunch, a collection of literary profiles published by University of Queensland Press (ISBN 0702231258).
Sydney Bauer
Sydney Bauer has worked as a journalist and TV executive. As Director of Programming for a major Australian network, Sydney was able to indulge a personal passion for US dramas such as CSI, Law and Order and The Practice and meet with revered TV writers such as Steven Bochco, Aaron Sorkin and Dick Wolf. Sydney Bauer resides in Sydney and has just finished writing her second novel, Gospel.
Born in Bicton Western Australia, Dave was originally known in Australia as a Punk Rocker famous for his song "Suburban Boy" and for refusing to appear on Countdown :)
Geoffrey Cousins
Geoffrey Cousins is one of Australia's best known business and community leaders. His corporate life includes periods as CEO at George Patterson and Optus, in addition to positions on ten public company boards ranging from PBL to Telstra. He was the founding chairman of the Starlight Foundation and the Museum of Contemporary Art among many other community involvements. The Butcherbird is his first novel.
Robert Symington
Tim Pegler
Tim Pegler is an award–winning journalist and author. During a decade at newspapers including The Age, the Herald Sun and the Australian, he received media prizes from the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission and United Nations Association of Australia. Tim is now a freelance website editor.
Tim Peglar
Estelle Thompson
Colin Cotterill is a cartoonist, illustrator and novelist. An Australian citizen, born in London, he has lived and been employed in various educational roles in Australia, Israel, the USA, Japan and Laos, before settling in Chiang Mai in Northern Thailand. For the last several years he has been involved with local nongovernmental agencies working to prevent child prostitution and rehabilitate abused children, and he recently set up the Books for Laos project, which raises money for the production of children's books.
Daniel Hatadi
Daniel Hatadi has been a musician, a petrol station attendant, and a software engineer in the poker machine industry. All great fuel for a career as a writer of crime fiction. Driven by the urge to corrupt his own name, Daniel decided to write a PI novel.
Malcolm Knox
Malcolm Knox was born in 1966. He grew up in Sydney and studied in Sydney and Scotland, where his one-act play, POLEMARCHUS, was performed in St Andrews and Edinburgh. He has worked for the Sydney Morning Herald as a journalist since 1994, formerly as a cricket writer and now as its literary editor. His first novel Summerland was published to great acclaim in the UK, US, Australia and Europe in 2000. In 2001 Malcolm was named one of the Sydney Morning Herald's Best Young Australian Novelists. He lives in Sydney with his wife and two children.
Anthony Santoro
Anthony Santoro was raised and educated in Melbourne's Northern suburbs. His parents are migrants - his father Italian; his mother Anglo-Indian. He has been, at times, a keen student, musician and businessman; but, always a writer and storyteller. Growing up in Melbourne's northern suburbs provided ample subject matter. For the better part, he dodged trouble. His current projects include the sequel to The Deception, titled Risk Management, and a film based upon The Deception. He is also working on another film with his brother.
Edmund Tadros
Edmund Tadros is a journalist at The Sydney Morning Herald in Australia and currently working in the Investigations team.
Matthew Freeman is a voracious reader of crime novels and believes The Rockford Files is the best television show of all time. He has been a journalist, editor, electorate officer and is now a media officer in regional Victoria. Married to Paula, they have three children, Isabelle, Joseph and Gabriel.
1940- Born in the UK, Stephen Knight came to Australia when he was appointed Teaching Fellow at the University of Sydney in 1963, then lecturer in English the following the year. He went on to hold senior positions at the Australian National University and the University of Melbourne, before returning to England in 1992 to take up a chair at De Montford University, Leicester. As well as numerous scholarly works in the area of medieval English literature, Knight's long held interest in crime fiction led him to him editing several anthologies of Australian crime stories. He was awarded the Ned Kelly Lifetime Achievement Award in 2001.
L.P. Hansen
Thomas Michael Keneally, AO (born 7 October 1935) is an Australian novelist, playwright and author of non-fiction. He is best known for writing Schindler's Ark, the Booker Prize-winning novel of 1982, which was inspired by the efforts of Poldek Pfefferberg, a Holocaust survivor. The book would later be adapted to Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List (1993), which won the Academy Award for Best Picture. Often published under the name Tom Keneally in Australia.
Tom Keneally
Hazel Baron
Pip Drysdale
Pip Drysdale is a writer, actor and musician who grew up in Africa and Australia. At 20 she moved to New York to study acting, worked in indie films and off-off Broadway theatre, started writing songs and made four records. After graduating with a BA in English, Pip moved to London where she dated some interesting men and played shows across Europe.
Terence J. Quinn
Terence J. Quinn grew up in Scotland. He had a successful international career as a newspaper journalist, editor and publisher in the UK, US, Canada, New Zealand and Australia. He now lives in Noosa, Australia, where he is currently working on his third Jonno Bligh novel.
Christian White is an Australian author and screenwriter. His debut novel, The Nowhere Child, won the Victorian Premier's Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript. He co-created the television series Carnivores, currently in development with Matchbox Pictures and Heyday TV, and co-wrote Relic, a psychological horror feature film to be produced by Carver Films (The Snowtown Murders, Partisan). Born and raised on the Mornington Peninsula, Christian had an eclectic range of 'day jobs' before he was able to write full-time, including food-cart driver on a golf course and video editor for an adult film company. He now spends his days writing from his home in Melbourne where he lives with his wife, the filmmaker Summer DeRoche, and their adopted greyhound, Issy. He has a passion for true crime podcasts, Stephen King and anything to do with Bigfoot. The Nowhere Child is his first book. Christian's currently working on his second novel, due for publication by Affirm Press in 2019.
Alison Hoddinott
Alison Hoddinott was born in Hobart in 1931 and was educated at the Friends' School and the University of Tasmania. She won a scholarship to Oxford University in 1954. She has written and published extensively on the poetry of Gwen Harwood and co-edited Gwen Harwood's Collected Poems.
Domenic Cadden
Garry Disher
Gary Disher was born in 1949 and grew up on his parents' farm in South Australia. He gained post graduate degrees from Adelaide and Melbourne Universities. In 1978 he was awarded a creative writing fellowship to Stanford University, where he wrote his first short story collection. He travelled widely overseas, before returning to Australia, where he taught creative writing, finally becoming a full time writer in 1988. He has written more than 40 titles, including general and crime fiction, children's books, textbooks, and books about the craft of writing.
Bill Congreve
Terry Dowling
Francis Adams was born in Malta in 1862 and educated in England. He emigrated to Australia in 1884, largely as a result of ill health. Six years later he returned to England. He suicided in 1893 at the age of thirty. A freelance journalist and writer, Adams contributed poems, short stories and articles to numerous publications, most notably the Bulletin.
Tom Gilling
Tom Gilling was born in England in 1961 and emigrated to Australian in 1983. He is the author of The Sooterkinand Miles McGinty, both of which were shortlisted for major prizes in Australia and chosen by the New York Times as notable books of the year. Tom is the co-author of Bagman, the posthumous memoir of the corrupt Queensland policeman Jack Herbert. He lives in Sydney.
Clive Small
Clive Small is a former detective and Assistant Commissioner of the NSW Police. His investigations included the murder of anti-drugs campaigner Donald Mackay, the Nugan Hand bank, the shooting of police officer Michael Drury, the murder of Cabramatta MP John Newman and the backpacker murders which led to Ivan Milat being convicted.
Sylvia Johnson has written for ABC TV, internationally awarded educational videos for the NSW Dept of Education, and a young adult novel, Callie and The Prince (Pan Macmillan Australia 1996), which sold well and was reprinted in its first year.
Jennifer Rowe was born in Sydney, Australia. She obtained a M.A. in English Literature at the University of Sydney. She worked as assistant editor at Paul Hamlyn. She later worked at Angus and Robertson Publishers where she remained for fourteen years, first as editor and finally as publisher. She also writes children's books under the pseudonym 'Emily Rodda'.
Nicole Watson
Nicole Watson is a member of the Birri-Gubba People and the Yugambeh language group. She has a Master of Laws and has worked for Legal Aid Queensland and the National Native Title Tribunal. She is currently a researcher at Jumbunna Indigenous House of Learning, University of Technology, Sydney
Gary Corby has long been fascinated by ancient history, finding it more exciting and bizarre than any modern thriller. He's combined the ancient world with his love of whodunits, to create an historical mystery series set in Classical Greece. Gary lives in Sydney, Australia, with his wife and two daughters. He blogs at A Dead Man Fell From The Sky, on all things ancient, Athenian, and mysterious.
Michael Duffy
Michael Duffy reports for the Sydney Morning Herald on crime and other matters. Previously he wrote for Sydney's other newspaper, the Daily Telegraph. He has played in punk rock bands, written biographies of several Sydney characters, and is co-presenter of 'Counterpoint', Radio National's challenge to orthodox ideas.
Sulari Gentill
Sulari set out to study astrophysics, ended up graduating in law, and later abandoned her legal career to write books instead of contracts. When the mood takes her, she paints, although she maintains that she does so only well enough to know that she should write. She grows French black truffles on her farm in the foothills of the Snowy Mountains of NSW, which she shares with her young family and several animals... the farm, not the truffles. Sulari was recently offered a Varuna Fellowship. She was commended in the Fellowship of Australian Writers' 2008 Jim Hamilton Award, long-listed for the Hachette/QLD writers Centre Australian Manuscript Development Program for fiction writers, and shortlisted for the 2008 New Holland Publishers and NSW Writers Centre Genre Fiction Award. She has been writing for a few years, but thinking about it most of her life. She's pretty sure now that writing is what's she's supposed to do.
Peter Corris was born in Stawell, Victoria in 1942. When he was five his family left the country for Melbourne and he 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, 1980-81. He has travelled and lived for short periods in the Pacific, Britain, Europe and the USA.
L.A. Larkin
L.A. Larkin divides her time between writing topical thrillers and her work for one of Australia's leading climate change consultancies. To research The Genesis Flaw she drew on her time in Zimbabwe, consulted with world-renowned geneticists and worked closely with a computer hacker, even attending a hackers' conference. She recently returned from Antartica, which is the setting of her next thriller, Thirst, a climate change catastrophe.
Kathryn Fox
Kathryn Fox is a medical practitioner with a special interest in forensic medicine. She lives in Sydney. She has worked as a family physician, medical journalist and freelance writer having written regularly for publications including Australian Doctor, CLEO magazine and the Sun Herald. Her debut novel, Malicious Intent, received international acclaim and was the 2005 Davitt award winner for adult fiction. Kathryn is currently working on a TV project.
David Owen was born in Zimbabwe in 1956 and grew up in Malawi and Swaziland. He completed his education in South Africa and then spent some years working in London. He migrated to Australia in 1986 and lived in Melbourne for four years. He is now settled in Tasmania.
Robert M Kaplan
Dr Robert M Kaplan is a forensic psychiatrist and professor at the Graduate School of Medicine, University of Wollongong Australia, with an interest in the dark underside of human nature
Jill Paterson
Jill Paterson grew up in Adelaide before spending 11 years in Ontario, Canada. After returning to Australia, she settled in Canberra where she now lives with her husband, John. Jill has three adult children. After doing an arts degree at the Australian National University, she worked at the ANU's School of Law before spending the next 10 years with the Business Council of Australia and the University of NSW, ADFA Campus in the school of Electrical Engineering
David Whish-Wilson lives in Fremantle, Western Australia, where he teaches creative writing at Curtin University. He is the author of short stories and the novel The Summons, published in 2006.
Mark Dapin
Mark Dapin moved to Australia in the late 1980s. He is the author of Strange Country and King of the Cross, has been editor in chief of ACP's men's magazines, and a hugely popular columnist for Fairfax's Good Weekend. He lives in Sydney with his partner and two children.
Philip McLaren
Philip Ian McLaren was born in Redfern, Australia, one of seven children, a descendant of the Kamilaroi people from the Warrumbungle Mountain region in northwestern New South Wales. His first novel, Sweet Water, Stolen Land, won the 1992 David Unaipon Award.
Helen Fitzgerald is one of thirteen children and grew up in country Victoria. After graduating with honours in English and History she left Australia to go travelling, meeting and marrying Scots-Italian journalist, Sergio Casci, along the way. They live in Glasgow and have two children.
Peter Klein is the son of award winning children's author Robin Klein. His previous book 'A Strapper's Tale: Recollections of Kingston Town's Strapper' was a best-seller. He's spent a lifetime in horseracing working for some of Australia's top trainers like the legendary T J Smith and Bart Cummings and was a one time strapper of champion galloper Kingston Town, a successful horse trainer in his own right and now works in the media as Racing Manager of Australian Associated Press. Klein can be found most race days outside the mounting yard, checking out future winners.
Miranda Darling
Miranda Darling began her career as a fashion model in Paris and London, then went on to read English and Modern Languages at Oxford University. She travelled widely in countries such as Russia, Azerbaijan, Croatia, Namibia and Indonesia before returning to Australia to complete a Masters in Strategic Studies and Defence. She analysed new security threats for a think tank, where she published widely in newspapers and journals. She retains an interest in international intrigue and now writes full time.
Michael Robotham was born in Australia in 1960, and grew up in small NSW country towns, until becoming a journalist on a Sydney newspaper. He worked as a journalist in Australia, Europe, Africa and America. In 1993 he quit journalism to become a ghostwriter, collaborating with politicians, pop stars, psychologists, adventurers and sports people to write their autobiographies.
Katherine Howell
Katherine was born and raised in Sydney. After leaving school she worked in various jobs, including as an animal handler, and bookshop sales assistant, and went to university for a year to study science. Keen for something different she then joined the ambulance service, and spent the next fifteen years working on the road in various parts of NSW.
Steven Horne
Steven Horne was born in Queensland, Australia. He attended the Royal Military College and after graduation served as an officer in the regular army. His military service culminated in operational deployments to East Timor in 2000 with the UN peacekeeping force and to Bougainville in 2001 as a patrol commander with the multi-national force. He has since worked as a contractor in Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq. He is currently based in Dubai.
Michelle Schwarz
Michelle Schwarz is a former lawyer and the author of One Split Second: The Death of David Hookes and the Trial of Zdravko Micevic (2006).
Felicity Young
Felicity Young was born in Hanover, Germany in 1960. She settled in Perth in 1976. Having a brother-in-law who is a retired police superintendent, it was almost inevitable she would turn to crime writing.
John Kerr
John Kerr worked as a police roundsman and court report for a daily newspaper in New Zealand, and has resided in Melbourne and Sydney since 1977. He has published many true crime books, including Untold Violence; Walsh Street; Neddy: the life and crimes of Arthur 'Neddy' Smith; The Phillip Island Murder; Hellbent: Ces Waters and Me; and Roger Rogerson's memoir, The Dark Side. He is the author of Wanted: John & Lucy about the helicopter hijack and prison break, Bloody Relations: true stories of murder in the family and a series of 96-page books on true-crime themes. He is working on this country's first book on its killings by contract, The Hit Men, and a dictionary of Crime & Punishment in Australia, to be published in 2010.
Peter Temple
Born in South Africa, Peter Temple moved to Australia in 1980 as a journalist. He settled in Sydney, before moving to Melbourne to edit Australian Society magazine. He has worked extensively as a journalist and editor, for newspapers and magazines in several countries. He has also taught journalism, editing and media studies at a number of universities. Temple was the first senior lecturer in Editing and Publishing, playing an important role in establishing the prestigious Professional Writing and Editing course at Melbourne's RMIT University. In 1995, he became a self-employed editor and full-time writer.
Lindy Cameron
Lindy Cameron wanted to be a famous scientist when she grew up but became a surburban journalist instead, until she got bored filling the gaps between the ads and switched to book editing because it meant she didn't have to interview people. She is now a crime writer - which is what she wanted to be in the second place.
Tara Moss
Born in Victoria, British Columbia, Moss is now a proud dual Australian/Canadian citizen, and resides in Sydney.
Simone Bailey
Simone Bailey was born in the miniscule town of Merriwa, New South Wales and spent most of her adult life working in the Sydney legal industry. She has been writing stories since she learned how to structure a sentence. Some have been published, some have won awards, some have been rejected and some have been relegated to the Council-issue recycling bin.
P D Martin
Phillipa Martin - was born in Melbourne, Australia. A big reader from an early age, Phillipa particularly loved reading fantasy books and children's detective books like the Famous Five and Nancy Drew books. She moved on to Agatha Christie at eight years old and wrote her first mystery novella in Grade 5.
Colin McLaren
Colin McLaren was one of Australia's most experienced taskforce detectives and investigated the Walsh Street murders, the Mr Cruel kidnappings and the NCA bombing and murder. After his encounter with the Mafia, Colin lectured at the Detective Training School. He has resigned from the police force and divides his time between Italy and Australia.
T.J. Joyce
T.J. Joyce lives in Queensland and is now retired after a lifetime spent working in the community. Always an avid reader, she has now turned her attention to writing and is currently at work on her second novel.
Caroline Petit
CAROLINE PETIT was born in Washington D.C., raised in Maryland and now lives in Melbourne, Australia with her husband. She is a graduate of Chatham College in Pittsburgh and also holds advance degrees from Johns Hopkins University, the London School of Economics, and the University of Melbourne's School of Law. Caroline is a writer and producer for Write Angle Productions and has contributed pieces to numerous publications. The Fat Man's Daughter is her first novel.
Ken Gelder
Ken Gelder is Professor of Literary Studies at The University of Melbourne.
Rachael Weaver
Rachael Weaver is Research Fellow in Literary Studies at The University of Melbourne.
Randall Longmire
Randall Longmire was born in Adelaide, South Australia in 1973. Elephant Speak (2002), his first novel, introduces Sydney Detectives John Morton and Regina Gardner. It is Randall's first published title. His second title Static, another Morton and Gardner blockbuster, was published in October 2004. His third Morton and Gardner novel, Of Poisoned Minds, is yet to be released. Randall has also written numerous short stories and a childrens book. Now residing in Sydney, Randall lives with his fiance Kelli and their cat Polli.
Alex Palmer
Alex Palmer was born in London in 1952. Her father abandoned her family when she was very young and they left England when she was five to live variously in South Africa, New Zealand, and Australia, arriving in Sydney in the late 1960s. Here, she studied English literature and language at Macquarie University and later sat for a postgraduate Diploma in information management at the University of New South Wales. Alex has traveled extensively in Australia and in Asia, Europe, Britain and North America. After a working life which has ranged from occupations as diverse as geriatric nursing to automated systems design, she now writes full time. She is married and lives in Canberra.
Lucy Sussex was born in New Zealand in 1957. She has degrees in English and Librarianship from Monash University, and is a freelance researcher, editor and writer. She has published widely, writing anything from literary criticism to horror and detective stories. In addition she is a literary archaeologist, rediscovering and republishing the nineteenth-century Australian crime writers Mary Fortune and Ellen Davitt. Her short story, `My Lady Tongue' won a Ditmar (Australian Science Fiction Achievement Award) in 1988. In 1994 she was a judge for the international Tiptree award, which honours speculative fiction exploring not