Valerie Lawson
Valerie Lawson — Journalism, biography, research
Valerie is one of Australia’s leading journalists, and
the author of the critically acclaimed The Allens Affair, a true story
about what happens when a senior executive’s mind starts to unravel and
things begin to go horribly wrong in the interconnected worlds of law and high
finance.
Her biography of P.L.Travers, the highly eccentric and talented Australian author who wrote, among many other things, the much-loved Mary Poppins books is titled Out of the Sky She Came. It was released in 1999 by Hodder Headline to positive reviews and was short-listed for the Kibble Awards. It was published in 2005 by Aurum in the UK, and in 2006 by Simon and Schuster in the USA.
Valerie has been contracted by Murdoch Books to write a history of ballet in Australia.
Antony Loewenstein — Non-fiction
A former journalist with the Sydney Morning Herald’s F2 and The Age newspapers, Antony’s first book titled My Israel Question was released by MUP in August 2006. He has been nominated for the Australian Arabic Council Annual Media Award for his work on Hanan Ashrawi and contributed a chapter to Margo Kingston’s successful book Not Happy, John.
The Blogging Revolution was published by MUP in 2008. It is a colourful and revelatory account of bloggers around the world who live and write under repressive regimes — many of them risking theis lives by doing so. More information: http://www.bloggingrevolution.com/
Kate Lilley
photo John Tranter
Kate Lilley — Poetry, criticism, Renaissance studies
Kate’s new book of poems Versary is published by Salt Publications in Cambridge, England:
http://www.saltpublishing.com/
You can read three poems from Kate’s new book on this site.
Amanda Lohrey — Novels, short fiction, essays
Amanda is one of Australias leading literary fiction writers. She has published four novels: The Morality of Gentlemen, The Reading Group, Camille’s Bread (which won the Australian Literature Society’s Gold Medal) and The Philosopher’s Doll (Penguin, 2004).
Amanda’s latest work Vertigo is a fable of love and awakening, a bush pastoral about the unexpected way emotions can return and life can change. This beautifull written novella tells the story of Luke and Anna, who decide they no longer want to live in the city and seek refuge in a sleepy settlement on the coast. There they build a new life amid the beauty and danger of the natural world. But the country is not what it seems from a distance as they begin to realise once they are faced with the dangers of the environment. There is drought and then a life-threatening fire, plus the various local characters they begin friendships with. And then there is their son who comes with them… or does he?
World rights: Black Ink. Contact: Sophy Williams http://www.blackincbooks.com/
Amanda Lohrey
photo by Richard Whitfield/ Penguin Group
In 1995 Amanda’s novel Camille’s Bread was published to high critical acclaim by HarperCollins. It won the Victorian Premier’s Prize for Fiction and the Gold Medal of the Australian Literature Society, and has remained in print since publication.
‘A novel
about love and noodles, dreams and responsibilities. A contemplative, wry and
tender book.’ — Philippa Hawker, Marie Claire
Her 2004 novel The Philosopher’s Doll focuses on a modern dilemma: a married couple have to choose whether they should have children, and if so when?
In a short but complex and layered novel about the timeless conundrum of free will, Amanda Lohrey explores the postmodern condition of hi-tech affluence where there is such a thing as too much choice. Or is it only the illusion of choice?
Caroline Lurie ― memoir
Caroline Lurie was born and raised in the UK. She came to Australia in the 1970s, and in 1980 set up Australian Literary Management. She sold the company a decade later but has still retained strong links with the literary community. This is Caroline’s first novel.
What Price Promises is set in the early 1960s in London and in the south of England. It takes place over a little more than a year and follows the two main characters, Barbara Townsend, who is 18 and just starting her first job as a secretary in London, and her brother Francis, aged 9, who is being sent to boarding school.
Their parents have had an acrimonious divorce and their father has married a woman Barbara loathes, leading to a rift between her and her father. She also has a troubled relationship with her mother, a needy neurotic woman who depends heavily on emotional support from Barbara.
The sixties in London were heady times. Barbara, without a person she can trust or confide in, struggles to negotiate a minefield of emotional disasters as men prey on her vulnerability.
But it is her young brother who appeals so strongly in this novel. He is desperately unhappy at his boarding school, and bullying by aggressive boys leaves him devastated. And when he is comforted by the schoolmaster and his wife, allegations are made about the impropriety of their actions.
On the surface this is a coming-of-age novel for two people who are almost a generation apart, but its central concern is the way in which the young are damaged or helped by the adults in their lives. An insightful and beautifully written work.
Rights: World rights available
Barry Maitland
Barry Maitland — Crime fiction
Barry Maitland was born in Scotland and after studying architecture at Cambridge University practised and taught in Britain before moving to Australia to take up the position of Professor of Architecture at the University of Newcastle. His crime novels feature Detective Chief Inspector David Brock and Detective Sergeant Kathy Kolla as two London-based police investigators.
His first Brock and Kolla novel was The Marx Sisters (1994) which was followed by The Malcontenta; All My Enemies; The Chalon Heads; Silvermeadow; Babel; The Verge Practice; No Trace, Spider Trap, and a s tandalone title, Bright Air.
2009 will see the release of the tenth Brock and Kolla novel, Dark Mirror, with a focus on the Pre-Raphaelite artist Dante Gabriel Rosetti.
“Comparable to the psychological crime novelists such as
Ruth Rendell… tight plots, great dialogue, very atmospheric.”
— Sydney Morning Herald.
Barry Maitland is published in Australia by Allen & Unwin;
in the U.K. by Orion and Arciadia Books, and in the U.S. by St Martin’s Press.
Mark McKenna
Currently a Research Fellow at ANU, Mark McKenna is an outstanding historian, and author of The Captive Republic (Cambridge University Press, 1996) and Looking For Blackfellas’ Point: An Australian History of Place (University of NSW Press, 2002) which won the Australian Cultural Studies Prize 2002; the NSW Premier’s Award for Non-Fiction 2003; and the NSW Premier’s Award (Book of the Year), 2003. He is currently working on the biography of Manning Clark which has been contracted to MUP.
Duncan McNab
A former detective in the NSW police force in 1986, Duncan moved into sleuthing for criminal defence cases and the corporate world, then worked as a producer/journalist for programs such as 4 Corners and Sunday and in the print media as well. The Usual Suspect, a biography of notorious crime figure Abe Saffron, was published by Pan Macmillan in 2005. His book The Dodger, based on the life of ex-policeman Roger Rogerson, was released by Pan Macmillan in late 2006.
In 2008 Duncan joined forces with investigative journalist Ross Coulthart to write Dead Man Running, an exposé of the world's most feared motorcycle gang: The Bandidos. Dead Man Running was published by Allen and Unwin in 2008 and became an instant best-seller.
Andrew Main
Andrew’s first book Other People’s Money published in 2003 by Harper Collins is a thorough and entertaining account of the Royal Commission into the collapse of insurance giant HIH. A finance journalist for more than twenty years, Andrew reported on the Commission each day from its inception and cleverly captures the arrogance, ignorance and self-delusion of the major players. His last title was a biography of the highly controversial financier, Rene Rivkin (HarperCollins 2005)
Kathy Marks — Non-fiction
Kathy Marks is a highly respected journalist who works for the Independent covering major stories for Australia and the Pacific region. Her non-fiction book Pitcairn: Paradise Lost is a riveting account of the child sex abuse trials on Pitcairn Island. In late 2004 Marks was one of only four reporters who remained on the island for the duration of the six-week case. For the first time her book tells the extraordinary story of the inner workings of this closed, secretive community and the events that have exposed it to the world.
Pitcairn: Paradise Lost was published by HarperCollins in Australia and New Zealand,
by HarperCollins in Britain and by the Free Press in the US.
David Marr — Journalism, biography, essays, television production
David Marr
Patrick White — A Life; photo by William Yang
David’s first book was Barwick (Allen & Unwin), a biography of the former Chief Justice of Australia, which won the 1981 NSW Premier’s Literary Award. This was followed by The Ivanov Trail, the story of the spy scare in Canberra. Then in 1991 the brilliant and universally critically acclaimed biography Patrick White — A Life was released by Random House in Australia, Jonathan Cape in Britain, and Random House in the USA. This biography of the Novel Prize winning novelist won seven major Australian awards.
In 1994 Patrick White — Letters was published in Australia followed by publications in the UK and USA.
The Henson Case, released by Text Publishing in 2008, examined the uproar caused by the withdrawal of some of Bill Henson’s photographs from a Sydney art gallery on the grounds that they may have been obscene.
David Marr and Marian Wilkinson — Dark Victory: The Story of The Tampa
In August 2001 a Norwegian cargo ship came across a sinking ferry off the coast of Australia. Those on board were mainly Afghans. The Captain of The Tampa picked up the people and tried to land in Australia but was refused permission, setting off an international incident. Dark Victory is the inside story of the Tampa crisis and the political strategy that powered it; of how the Prime Minister of Australia, John Howard, seized on the issue of ‘border protection’ to start a scare campaign and bring his party back from the politically dead.
Award-winning writer David Marr and Marian Wilkinson are accomplished investigative journalists, who burrow deep into the world of spin-doctors, bureaucrats and the military to unravel this extraordinary saga.
An updated version of this highly successful book has recently been released by Allen & Unwin.
Rights sold: Australia/New Zealand (Allen & Unwin, October 2002)
Tina Matthews
Children’s author and illustrator Tina Matthews was born in New Zealand, and has worked as a puppet maker, a bass player, a teacher and an artist and designer. About Out of The Egg… You think you know the tale of the little red hen. You think you know how it ends. But in this story everything changes when a hardworking red hen lays a perfect white egg. And out of this egg comes a chick with a mind of her own.
Robert Milliken — Journalism, biography
Robert Milliken
International acclaimed journalist who in 1986 published
No Conceivable Injury (Penguin) regarded as the definitive account of
the British atomic weapon tests at Maralinga, in the Australian desert.
Robert’s latest work is a biography of Lillian Roxon, the fast-living
Australian journalist who compiled the world’s first Rock Encyclopedia and who died tragically in New York in 1973 aged 41. It was published by Black Inc. in Australia in 2002. US publisher Thunder’s Mouth Press (http://www.thundersmouth.com/) released their edition in 2005
Lorenzo Montesini — Fiction, autobiography
Lorenzo Montesini
An Alexandrian by birth, Lorenzo heads the Australian Friends of the Alexandrian Library in Egypt. His stylish autobiography My Life and Other Misdemeanours was released by Penguin in 1999. With enormous gusto Lorenzo Montesini, Prince Giustiniani, recalls his early years in Egypt, his arrival in Australia, his military service in Vietnam, and his tumultuous relationship with his partner Robert Straub, and the events surrounding a certain wedding in Venice.
Mary Moody — Memoirs, gardening author, television presenter
Mary Moody
A prolific and popular gardening author as well as a television presenter. Mary left her television career, husband, children, grandchildren and garden for a glorious six month break away from it all in France. She turned the experience into a personal memoir titled Au Revoir which was released in 2001 by Pan Macmillan. It featured as one of the five titles in the Books Alive Program for 2004.
Mary’s love affair with France was so strong that she decided towards the end of her stay to buy a dilapitated house in the small village of Frayssinet-le-Gélat in The Lot region.
When she returned to Australia she realised that the six months in France had given her the opportunity to stop and reflect on her childhood as well as her adult life, marriage, career, relationships with her mother, her children and grandchildren. She had now reached a watershed. She could either pick up from where she’d left off before she’d set off to France, or make some radical decisions about her future.
Mary and her husband David had lived in a beautiful old house in the Blue Mountains for over twenty years. After some serious thinking, she realised that farming was one thing she had always wanted to do. She and David went exploring and discovered Yetholme, a beautiful old Federation house set on 28 acres near Orange, and saw the potential to set up a French-style farm complete with potager garden and goose and duck breeding. So that took care of Australia.
But there was still France, with memories of wonderful times she’d had and a house waiting to be renovated. And a sister that she has not seen for over thirty years who has come back into her life as a result of the publication of Au Revoir.
What resulted was the best-selling Last Tango in Toulouse, a moving, tender and at times hilarious account of farming and houses, marriage, lovers, and glorious, glorious food.
Both these titles were on the best-seller list for many months. She then wrote the final part of her memoir, Long Hot Summer, which was released in 2005.
This was followed by a beautifully photo-illustrated book titled Lunch at Madame Murat’s, a celebration of the local restaurant managed by Madame Murat, which has celebrated one hundred years of continuous operation in the French village in which Mary has her house. Both of these new titles are published by Pan Macmillan.
Mary's latest memoir, Sweet Surrender, was released in May 2009. Surrendering… to the process of ageing, to the pull of family, the influence of her parents, her husband and children who have shaped the person she now is.
Rights sold: Australia/New Zealand (Pan Macmillan Australia)
Christopher Morgan — Fiction, children’s fiction
Christopher Morgan has been a singer in a French restaurant, an artificial tree builder, a kitchen hand, a fire brigade roster clerk and a printing factory storeroom worker. In 1996 Christopher was diagnosed with a brain tumour and found that the only thing that was improved by the tumour was his imagination and decided to put it to good use. His first novel, The Island of Four Rivers, was published in June 2006 by Scribe. His children’s story Pirates Eat Porridge was published by Allen & Unwin in 2006 with a follow-up story Pirates Drive Buses in 2007.
Kerrie O’Connor
Kerrie is a journalist turned fantasy writer. Her writing is exciting, energetic, and compelling. Her first children’s book Through the Tiger’s Eye (Allen & Unwin) is a spellbinding story suffused with humour. Rights have been sold to Mondodori in Italy.
Book 2 in this trilogy, By The Monkey’s Tail, has just been released with Book 3 to follow. Kerrie’s illustrated children’s book, Little Jingle Says No!, was also published by Allen and Unwin in 2006.
Ben Naparstek
Ben Naparstek graduated with degrees in Arts and Law from The University of Melbourne and took up a graduate fellowship to study with the Humanities Center at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. At twenty-three, he was appointed editor of the magazine The Monthly in May 2009.
He has written regularly about literature and politics for a wide array of international publications including The Financial Times, The Age, The Australian, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Jerusalem Post, The New Zealand Listener, The South China Morning Post and The Vancouver Sun.
Ben Naparstek: photo Ponch Hawkes
A collection of his interview-profiles on leading international writers will be published by Scribe in late 2009.
He is also co-editor with Justin Clemens of The Jacqueline Rose Reader, due out from Duke University Press in early 2010.
Helen O’Neill — Non-fiction
Award-winning newspaper and TV journalist. Helen’s work appears in Australia, the US and the UK. Her first book, Life Without Limits, published by Random House in 2003, is a testament to the spirit of David Pescud, a dyslexic who pioneered Sailors with Disabilities. Just released by Hardie Grant is an exquisite book, Florence Broadhurst – Her Secret and Extraordinary Lives, based on the life and art of the brilliant wallpaper and fabric designer Florence Broadhurst. Chronicle will release a US edition in 2007.
Melanie Oppenheimer — Non-fiction, Australian history
Dr Melanie Oppenheimer has written extensively on twentieth century Australian history, especially women, volunteering and war. Among her books is All Work No Pay, Australian Civilian Volunteers in War (2002), which was shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s History Awards. Melanie is a Senior Lecturer in Australian History at the University of Western Sydney, and her latest book Oceans of Love: Narrelle – An Australian Nurse in World War 1 was released by ABC Books in 2006.
Shirley Painter — Memoir
When Shirley Painter’s first book was published, she was 83 years old. She was lucky to get that far: when she was four years old, she was so badly injured she was pronounced dead and taken to the morgue. The man who had beaten her almost to death was her father.
The Bean Patch is the story of how a young girl survived growing up in a volatile household in the 1920s and 1930s; how school, and later university, became her escape route from a family filled with secrets and violence.
It is also the story of how, as a mature woman and a mother herself, she came face to face with what happened to her as a child — how she found the strength to drag her terrible and long-buried memories into the light in order to move on.
Beautifully written, this is a disturbing, compelling and ultimately inspirational story.
Rights sold: Australia/New Zealand (HarperCollins Australia, Sept. 2002)
Glyn Parry
Glyn Parry — Fiction, and fiction for young adults
Glyn is a highly talented award-winning writer for young adults. His novels includeMonster Man, LA Postcards, Radical Takeoffs, Stoked and Mosh. Sad Boys and Scooter Boy were published by Hodder Headline in 1998 and 1999.
A recent title was Invisible Girl, published by Fremantle Arts Centre Press in 2003.
His recent adult novel The Ocean Road was published in 2007 by Fremantle Arts Centre Press:
In the summer of 1976, Frank and Laura travel down south to a cottage by the sea with their son Toby. Toby lays bare all that he sees. It is the summer Frank is called away and Laura meets a man in the street. It is a summer of fragile lives and uncertain times, of loss and longing, and secrets that can destroy.
It is the summer where one phone call
changes a marriage forever.
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