Henry Reynolds & Marilyn Lake – Non-fiction, Australian history
Melbourne University Press have published a book on race titled Drawing the Global Colour Line,, by two of Australia’s most respected historians. World rights, excluding Aust/NZ, have been contracted to Cambridge University Press.
Andrew Riemer — Memoirs, translation, essays on cultural topics
Andrew Riemer
A scholar, essayist and cultural journalist, Andrew was born in Budapest and arrived in Australia in 1947. The first volume of his memoirs, Inside Outside — Life Between Two Worlds, won the NSW Ethnic Affairs Commission Prize in 1992. This was followed by The Habsburg Café (1992); America with Subtitles (1995); and Sandstone Gothic (1998). In his latest book, Between the Fish and the Mudcake, he reminisces on writers, books, food, music and places.
Andrew’s biography of Robert Hughes, Hughes: End of Modernism, was published by Duffy & Snellgrove in 2001.
He has recently turned to the translation of French literature. His translation of Ce Que Racontait by Catherine Rey was published by Giramondo.
A new non-fiction title, My Family’s History of Smoking, was published by Melbourne University Press in 2008.
Alison Rogers
Alison has worked in and around the media for the last twenty years and has edited and produced a collection of short stories for the ABC. For two years after that Alison was media adviser for Senator Natasha Stott Despoja. Her first book, The Natasha Factor: Politics, Media and Betrayal, was released by Lothian in 2004.
Leigh Sales — Journalism, non-fiction
Detainee 002: The Case of David Hicks
Leigh Sales is the ABC’s National Security Correspondent. She visited Guantanamo Bay twice during her recent four-year posting as the network’s Washington correspondent. In 2005, she won a prestigious Walkley Award for her coverage of the Guantanamo military commissions and was nominated again in 2006 for her reporting of Hurricane Katrina.
Detainee 002 is a chilling reminder that, in a war with ever-changing rules and no end in sight, there are no limits. If you care about the Australia you live in, you must read this book.
Leigh’s most recent title is Doubt, a substantial essay published by Melbourne University Press in their essay series.
“This is the story that Canberra didn’t want us to know —
it is scrupulously fair and a brilliant yarn.” — Ray Martin
In a remote American military base at Guantanamo Bay, 385 enemy combatants sit waiting for their day in court. Among them is David Hicks, who was detained for five years until the March 2007 hearing where he pleaded guilty to the charge of providing material support for terrorism.
Detainee 002 reveals in unprecedented detail how an Australian citizen wound up in the War on Terror. Based on more than five years of reporting and dozens of interviews with insiders, Leigh Sales explains the intricacies of Hicks’s case, from his capture in Afghanistan, to life in Guantanamo Bay, to the behind-the-scene establishment and workings of the military commissions.
Leigh Sales’ impeccable research takes us from top-secret negotiations at the White House and Pentagon to the domestic fallout Hicks’s incarceration has had on his family, to the campaign that Major Michael Mori, the marine who becomes his greatest advocate, waged on his behalf.
David Hicks’s case is emblematic of some of the greatest challenges facing the world today: the rise of Islamic extremism, terrorism and the accountability of governments towards their citizens. It is a chilling reminder that, in a war with ever-changing rules and no end in sight, there are no limits.
Published by Melbourne University Publishing. Photo: Leigh Sales.
Margaret Simons — Novels, journalism
Her first novel The Ruthless Garden won the Angus
and Robertson Bookworld prize for new novelists in 1993. Her last novel was
The Truth Teller. A collection of her gardening columns, titled
Wheelbarrows, was published by New Holland in 1999.
Margaret’s investigate book on the inner workings of the
parliamentary press gallery in Canberra, Fit to Print, was released in
1999 by UNSW Press.
In 2003 Hodder Headline released The Meeting of the Waters: Secret Women’s Business
Australia is the world’s oldest continent. The Murray is its longest river. The Meeting of the Waters is the story of what happened at the mouth of the Murray, when modern western European culture met older indigenous ways in a dispute about the building of a bridge. This is a story — part investigative journalism, part spiritual journey — about conflicting narratives of the land, and the fragility of European attempts to belong in the so-called ‘new world’.
Margaret’s most recent title is Resurrection in a Bucket, a book on the philosophy and implications of composting, published by Allen & Unwin.
Margaret has also completed a Quarterly Essay for Black Inc. on Mark Latham.
She is currently working on a biography of Malcolm Fraser, to be published by Melbourne University Press.
Stephen Smith — Fiction
Stephen Smith’s debut novel Stranger is a roller-coaster of a road story through a sub-culture of drugs, revenge and madness. At times its depiction of the world of addicts verges on the hilarious, but the story also has a sinister dimension. In the world of drug dealers and users, paranoia and violence are always waiting in the wings. Stranger was released by Random House Australia in 2006.
Phil Somerville — Cartoons
An outstandingly talented cartoonist, Phil Somerville has published work in newspapers and magazines including The Bulletin and The
Australian’s Review of Books. For three years he held a weekly Friday
satirical spot in the Sydney Morning Herald’s back page column
Stay-in-Touch.
Laurie Stiller — Children’s fiction
In 1997 Random House published Laurie’s first children’s book Charlie Carver Stacks It! with brilliant illustrations by Jeff Raglus. The sequel, Packing it!, was released by Hodder Headline in February 2000. His illustrated children’s book Princess Max was released in 2000 by Random.
Helen Thomas – Non Fiction
Helen Thomas has worked as a journalist for more than thirty years in both radio and print, and is an experienced presenter and producer. She is currently the manager of ABC News Radio as well as being a thoroughbred horse breeder and racehorse syndicate manager.
Helen’s great passion is for horses and racing and this has spawned a number of highly successful and entertaining books on the subject. Past the Post: What Great Horses do When they Leave the Race Track – ABC Books 2004. A Horse Called Mighty – Random House 2007. 42 Days at the Races – Allen and Unwin 2008.
Rosie
Helen’s current project is Life with Rosie. It will be published by Pier 9/ Murdoch Books. Life with Rosie is about the exhilarating world of young racehorses. The book charts the rise of Rosie (photo, left), daughter of Poetic Waters and King of Roses, great-grand-daughter of the wondeful race mare Spirit of Kingston, as she makes the transition from yearling to racehorse — with Helen along for the ride, one of thousands of hopeful owners across Australia, praying her youngster is a good one. This book will be right at the heart of the action: a compelling tale of a little filly becoming a racehorse, a trainer with the dedication to shape that transformation – and a small time breeder living the dream.
Peter Timms — Non-fiction, memoir, art writing
Peter Timms
Currently Art Reviewer for The Age, Peter was for many years the editor of the journal Art Monthly. In 1986 Oxford University Press published his definitive volume Australian Studio Pottery and China Painting.
Peter compiled an anthology of essays on gardening titled The Nature of Gardens, released by Allen & Unwin in 1999.
Among the contributors to this lively and unique collection are Marion Halligan, Margaret Scott, George Sedden and Alan Saunders.
His next book, Making Nature, combines personal memoir and natural history to explore Thoreau’s conviction that the whole world can be revealed in our own backyard. It was published by Allen & Unwin in 2001.
What’s Wrong With Contemporary Art was published by the University of New South Wales Press in 2004.
Australia’s Quarter Acre: The Story of the Ordinary Suburban Garden was published b Melbourne University Press iin 2006, and Private Lives: Australian at Home Since Federation was published in 2008.
In 2008 Peter completed a book on history of Hobart for the University of New South Wales Press.
You can read an excerpt from Making Nature on this site.
Andrew Tink — Non Fiction
Following eight years at the Bar, Andrew Tink spent nineteen years in the New South Wales Parliament, including eleven as a Shadow Minister and three as Shadow Leader of the House. After stepping down in 2007, Andrew became a Visiting Fellow at Macquarie University’s Law School, where he concentrates on his writing.
Andrew’s biography of William Charles Wentworth, his first published manuscript, will be released by Allen & Unwin in 2009. This is the story of the man Manning Clark described as ‘Australia’s greatest native son’. Best known as one of the first Europeans to cross the Blue Mountains, Wentworth led a life full of firsts. One of the first born Australians of European parents, the first Australian author to be published and co-founder of Australia’s first independent newspaper, Wentworth gave the colonists an Australian voice. One of Australia’s first barristers who fought for trial by jury, for the first Parliament in Australia and for self-government in an Act the British called ‘a legislative declaration of independence’ Wentworth was a physical and intellectual giant.
Ruthless when it suited him, he purchased the South Island of New Zealand for a pittance until a furious Governor made him give it back. With his rough charm, colonial cunning and English education, Wentworth was equally at ease addressing a rowdy meeting of ex-convicts as he was lobbying Ministers in the corridors of Whitehall. The son of a convict mother and a father who was the black sheep of a family which included a British Prime Minister, Wentworth was the first Parliament’s undoubted leader. More than once in his fight for self government, Wentworth threatened to block the Governor’s budget until the British Government gave in. Almost half a century before the Commonwealth was created, Wentworth led the fight for an inter-colonial legislature. Indeed Henry Parkes, the ‘Father of Federation’, later acknowledged Wentworth as his inspiration. Despite his achievements and his volcanic personality which was capable of deceiving friend and foe alike, this is the first comprehensive biography of Wentworth to be published.
John Tranter — Poetry, reviews
John Tranter
Berlin, 2002
John has published more than twenty books, including the Penguin Book of Modern Australian Poetry (1992), co-edited with Philip Mead. He is the editor of the internationally popular literary quarterly Jacket, free on the Internet at
http://jacketmagazine.com/
His latest collection of poems, Urban Myths: 210 Poems: New and Selected, was released in mid 2006, and won the Victorian Premier’s Prize for poetry in 2006, the New South Wales Premier’s Prize for poetry in 2007, the 2008 South Australian state award for poetry in 2008, and also in 2008 the South Australian Premier’s Prize for the best book in any field published in 2006-2007. No other collection of poetry has been so widely popular with the judges of so many different prizes.
Publisher’s blurb: Urban Myths:210 poems collects the best work to date from a poet considered one of the most original of his generation in Australia. A generous selection of new work is also included. Smart, wry and very stylish, John Tranter’s poems investigate the vagaries of perception and the ability of language to converge life, imagination and art so that we arrive, unexpectedly, at the deepest human mysteries.
‘Tranter may now be Australia’s most important poet.’
— US Publishers Weekly
The Australian Poetry Resources Internet Library (APRIL) project, which John Tranter started in 2004, has been funded with a major Linkage Grant from the Australian Research Council. Professor Elizabeth Webby and Creagh Cole, from the University of Sydney, in association with CAL (the Copyright Agency Limited), head a team of researchers building a wide-ranging library of resources on the Internet. You can check its progress here: http://april.edu.au/
You can visit a homepage for John Tranter’s writing at a new, permanent address: johntranter.com, where you can read more than a thousand pages of poems, interviews, book reviews (including dozens of reviews of John’s various books), a biography and a bibliography, and links to dozens of other sites on the Internet that relate to his writing.
Kirsten Tranter: fiction
The Legacy explores the complex workings of love and friendship, and asks whether it is possible to escape or to transform our scripted fate. Julia Alpers, a young woman from Sydney, travels to New York in August 2002 at the request of her friend Ralph to search for answers about their friend, his cousin Ingrid. Ingrid inherited a fortune when she was twenty-one and married Gil Grey, a charismatic dealer in the New York art world with a teenage daughter, Fleur, a child art prodigy. Ingrid has been missing since September 11, 2001, presumed dead in the destruction of the Twin Towers.
In New York, Julia is drawn into the networks of power and deception that characterize the underside of the art and academic worlds. As she grows closer to unearthing the disturbing truth about Ingrid’s life and death Julia is forced to confront her own conflicted feelings about her former friends, and make choices about how to shape her own future. A literary mystery, The Legacy reshapes the plot of Henry James’ novel The Portrait of a Lady into a study of ambivalence and desire, loss and possibility.
Kirsten Tranter
Kirsten Tranter recently completed a PhD in English (on Spenser’s The Faerie Queene) at Rutgers University and has been based in New York and Sydney for the past ten years. This is her first novel.
“An intelligent and engaging novel that is dense, intricate, detailed and acutely observed and beautifully written in a voice that is measured and consistent from start to finish.”
— Debra Adelaide, author of The Household Guide to Dying.
Australia/New Zealand rights: Harper Collins Australia
North America/Canada/translation rights: c/- William Morris Agency
United Kingdom rights: David Higham Associates
Photo credit: Chrysler Building, Manhattan: photo by Anannya Dasgupta
Julienne van Loon — Fiction, essays
Julienne was the Winner of the 2004 Vogel Award. Her novel Road Story was released in 2005. In 2006 she completed a new novel Backtracking, set in and around Port Hedland in the inhospitable far North of Australia. This book was published by Allen & Unwin in 2008.
Michael Wagner — Young Readers
A prolific children’s author whose Maxx Rumble footy series has garnered a large fan base among young boys.
Michael Wagner
Michael has now begun a new series about a family called the Undies, which has been contracted to Penguin Books Australia and is based on father/son relationships. Penguin / Puffin published the first volume in 2006: The Undies: Let the Games Begin. You can check out Michael’s new Web site here: http://www.michaelwagner.com.au/
Mark Wakely — Dream Home: Houses and the Imagination
Our homes occupy a central place in our imaginations. At the end of the day, they are where we cocoon ourselves and allow ourselves to dream.
Mark Wakely takes the reader on a wonderful ride between womb and tomb as he looks at what our homes mean to us at different stages of our lives. Dream Home is a book for anyone who’s ever made a house a home, and for all readers who question the notion of home. It is a book of universal appeal with numerous international references.
Mark Wakely — Sweet Sorrow: a beginner’s guide to death
Mark’s new book is remarkable: at times heart-breaking, at times humorous, it is dazzling for its profound honesty. Like most of us, Mark Wakely had always put death in the too-hard basket. He was curiously distanced from his own parents’ deaths. Thirty years later, he went on a journey to confront one of the most intensely personal yet universal experiences: our own mortality. With Mark as our guide, we are introduced to morticians and embalmers, rabbis and doctors, coffin makers and gravediggers. He reveals the fashions and the fads, the rituals and the deep emotion in a heartfelt and whimsical investigation into this timeless subject.
Mark Wakely is a Sydney-based writer, and a journalist with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Radio National.
Murray Waldren
Murray Waldren — Non-fiction
Murray’s Dining Out With Mr Lunch, a collection of
literary profiles, was published by the University of Queensland Press in 1999.
His analytical feature on the Moran trial, A Family Act, was shortlisted for a Walkley Award.
He then went on to write a book on the turbulent Moran family, Moran v Moran, which was published by HarperCollins Australia in 2001.
Murray’s book on the life and art of Reg Mombassa wil be released by HarperCollins in 2009. Chris O’Doherty (a.k.a. Reg Mombassa) has been a live-wire on the Australian scene for over 30 years. He is a renaissance man with a larrikin humour, a biting social conscience and a taste for the macabre. In an existentially Australian way, he has channeled Robert Crumb and Barry Humphries via Batman and Beano comics, the Goons and Andy Warhol, while remaining always Mombassa.
His Mambo clothing designs have given him international recognition. They range across religious, political and pop culture themes, including an Australian Jesus, armed alien monsters, fire-breathing chickens, farting dogs — all done with brilliant colour and irreverence.
Mombassa was a founding member of the legendary rock band Mental As Anything, for which he wrote many of the lyrics and much of the music. The band released 11 albums and 27 singles, with 20 songs making the top forty charts; it toured nationally and overseas in New Zealand, Canada, England, Europe, the US and Asia.
This biography will be based on numerous, detailed interviews with Reg Mombassa, who is giving unfettered access to himself, his journals and his drawings, paintigns an d prints. The book will be lavishly illustrated with over 120 reproductions of his unsettling art.
You can read an excerpt from Moran v Moran on this site.
Christine Wallace — Political and cultural journalism
Christine is a Canberra press gallery journalist of long
standing. Her controversial biography of Germaine Greer, The Untamed
Shrew, was published in 1997 in Australia and was released in the USA and
the UK.
Her latest title, The Private Don, based on a series of revealing letters by the normally reticent cricketer Sir Donald Bradman, was released by Allen & Unwin in late 2004.
Christine is currently working on a biography of Julia Gillard, contracted to Allen & Unwin.
Rachel Weiss — Travel, Memoir
At 39 Rachael Weiss took stock of her life. She was the eldest of three children, she had a degree, she had worked at various jobs in the corporate world but she was single. Armed with a romantic soul and a 1973 guide to Communist Czechoslovakia, Rachael left for Prague in search of her Bohemian roots. She dreams of meeting poets — after all they had voted in a poet as their first President — but instead finds a nation of dentists who drink copious amounts of beer, eat potatoes by the barrel-load and, to her mind, are the most dour race on the planet. This book is a hilarious account of her first six months in one of the most beautiful and puzzling cities in the world.
Christopher Womersley
Christopher Womersley – Fiction
Chris Womersley was born in Melbourne in 1968. His short fiction and reviews have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including Granta New Writing 14, Best Australian Stories 2006, The Griffith Review, New Australian Stories, The Monthly and The Age.
In 2007 Chris won the Josephine Ulrick Literature Prize for his short story “The Possibility of Water” and in 2008 he won the Ned Kelly Award for Best First Fiction for his debut novel The Low Road (Scribe)
Chris is currently writing his second novel, Bereft. It is a beautifully crafted and poignant story dealing with the aftermath of the First World War and the legacy it left behind.
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