BRISBANE WRITERS' FESTIVAL
September 3rd 2008 23:09
BRISBANE WRITERS’ FESTIVAL
17- 21 September 2008
Welcome to authors attending the 2008 Brisbane Writers’ Festival. The line-up includes a talented array of both international and local writers: Lawrence Hill, Richard Holmes, Sun Shuyun, Bruce Beresford, Anna Campbell, Steven Carroll, Steven Conte, Jackie French, Paul Ham, Angelo Loukakis, General Jim Molan and Ian Townsend.
Someone Knows My Name by Lawrence Hill won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize 2008 and the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. A former journalist with the Globe and Mail and parliamentary correspondent for the Winnipeg Free Press, Hill also speaks French and Spanish. He has lived and worked across Canada, in Baltimore, and in Spain and France, and travelled three times to work as a volunteer in the West African countries Mali, Cameroon and Niger. He is the author of the novels Any Known Blood and Some Great Thing, and the non-fiction work Black Berry, Sweet Juice: On Being Black and White in Canada. He co-authored, with Joshua Key, The Deserter's Tale: The Story of an Ordinary Soldier Who Walked Away from the War in Iraq. He lives in Canada with his wife and five children.
Richard Holmes is one of the most revered non-fiction writers working today. Born in London, he is writes and reviews regularly for various journals and newspapers, including the New York Review of Books. He has won numerous awards for his biographies of Coleridge, Shelley and Johnson. He is also editor of a new series of editions of classic English biographies that includes work by Samuel Johnson, Daniel Defoe and William Godwin. His new book, The Age of Wonder, is an examination of the life and work of the scientists of the Romantic age, who laid the foundations of modern science. It will be published by HarperCollins in September. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a Fellow of the British Academy and was awarded an OBE in 1992. He was awarded an honorary Litt.D. in 2000 by the University of East Anglia, where he was appointed Professor of Biographical Studies in September 2001.
Sun Shuyun was born in China in the 1960s. She graduated from Beijing University and won a scholarship to Oxford. She is a film and television producer and her previous books include The Long March and Ten Thousand Miles without a Cloud. For the past decade she has divided her time between Beijing and London. In July 2006, Shu was given the opportunity to record what life is really like for the people of Tibet and she seized the chance to spend a year in a remote town in the Tibetan mountain area. The result is her new book, A Year in Tibet, in which she explores the intimate details of the lives of a shaman and his family, a viillage doctor, a Party worker, a hotel manager, and a rickshaw driver. Through them she captures the tensions between Chinese and Tibetans, between an ancient and an alien culture, faith and science, continuity and modernisation.
Film director Bruce Beresford has made some of Australia’s best-known and most interesting films, including The Adventures of Barry Mackenzie, Breaker Morant, Don’s Party and Puberty Blues, and has had international success with Driving Miss Daisy, Black Robe and Paradise Road. His recent book, Josh Hartnett Definitely Wants to do This … true stories from a life in the screen trade, is a candid look at the world of celebrity, power and international film–making from one of cinema’s most accomplished practitioners.
Anna Campbell decided to become a writer shortly after she learned to walk. Then she discovered romance novels, and she knew she just had to tell stories abut love and hope and triumph over adversity. Not forgetting gorgeous, passionate men. After various jobs and as much travel as she could afford, including a stay of several years in the UK, Anna has now settled near the sea on the east coast of Australia. In Untouched, the kidnapped Grace Paget and loner Lord Sheene must both revolt against the strange set of circumstances that have forced them together.
Steven Carroll was born in Melbourne and grew up in Glenroy. He went to La Trobe University and taught English in high schools before playing in bands in the 1970s. After leaving the music scene he began writing as a playwright and became the theatre critic for the Sunday Age. After lecturing at RMIT, Steven now writes full time and lives in Brunswick, Victoria. His novels The Art of the Engine Driver and The Gift of Speed were both shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award. The Art of the Engine Driver was also shortlisted for France’s Prix Femina. In 2008 The Time We Have Taken won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best Book, South–East Asia and South Pacific region, as well as the 2008 Miles Franklin Award, Australia's most prestigious literary prize.
Steven Conte was born in 1966 and raised in Guyra in rural New South Wales. After six years of boarding school he lived and worked in Europe, and his first published short stories drew on his experiences as a traveller. He has lived in Sydney and Canberra and most recently in Melbourne. Bank teller, waiter, barman, cleaner, life model, public servant, taxi driver, receptionist, university tutor, editor and book reviewer are some of the jobs with which he has supported his writing. His debut novel, The Zookeepers War, has been shortlisted for the inaugural Prime Minister’s literary award for fiction.
Jackie French’s writing career spans eighteen years. She is one of the few writers to win both literary and children’s choice awards. Josephine Wants to Dance was awarded Book of the Year by the Australian Book Association in 2006 as well as the 2007 ABIA (Australian Book Industry Awards) Book of the Year Award. Hitler’s Daughter won the 2000 CBC Book of the Year for Younger Readers and the UK Wow! Award and has been listed as a ‘Blue Ribbon’ book in the USA. The bestselling Diary of a Wombat has won a swag of awards in Australia and the US, and been published in nine other territories. Her most recent books include How High Can a Kangaroo Hop, A Rose for the Anzac Boys and The Camel who crossed Australia.
Paul Ham is the author of the highly acclaimed Kokoda (HarperCollins, 2004) and the Australian correspondent for the London Sunday Times. He was born and educated in Australia and lives in Sydney, having spent several years working in Britain as a journalist and publisher. In November 2007 he released his second book, Vietnam, which has been lauded by both Vietnam Veterans and critics alike, and shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for non-fiction. Vietnam is the definitive account of Australia’s involvement in the war. Drawing on hundreds of unpublished sources as well as interviews with soldiers, politicians, medical practitioners, aid providers, entertainers and the Vietnamese people, Paul Ham reconstructs the epic history of a campaign that disfigured a country and divided the world, nations, families and friends.
Angelo Loukakis was born in Australia and has worked as a teacher, editor, publisher and scriptwriter. He is the author of a children's book on Greeks in Australia, and a travel book on Norfolk Island, as well as three books of fiction: For the Patriarch, Vernacular Dreams and Messenger. For the Patriarch received a NSW Premier's Literary Award and was set on the NSW HSC syllabus between 1986 and 2001. Angelo's parents came to Australia from Crete, and his most recent novel, The Memory of Tides, honours their generation.
General Jim Molan joined the Australian Army in 1968 and has served in Jakarta, East Timor, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, managing 300,000 American, British, Iraqi and Australian troops. Among his many tasks, he would oversee the first democratic elections in Iraq. It would prove the most formidable challenge of his forty-year career. In his gripping new book, Running the War in Iraq, Major General Molan gives a stark insider’s account of modern warfare and all it entails: the ghastly body count, the complex decisions that will mean life or death, the divide between political masters and foot soldiers - and the small, hard-won triumphs.
Ian Townsend is a journalist with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. His first novel, Affection, was shortlisted for the 2005 Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards, the 2006 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for a first novel, and the 2006 Colin Roderick Award. He’s also the winner of two Australian Eureka Prizes for science and medical research journalism, and is the 2006 John Oxley Library research fellow. In 2006, he was long-listed for the Dublin IMPAC literary award. His new novel, The Devil’s Eye, which will be launched by HarperCollins at this year’s festival, has been inspired by events surrounding one of the most powerful storms in history, a hurricane named Mahina, which struck Queensland in 1899. Ian lives in Brisbane with his family.
The Brisbane Writers Festival office is located at 12 Merivale St, South Brisbane, Queensland 4101, Australia.
Our mailing address is:
PO Box 3453
South Brisbane
Queensland 4101
Australia
Phone: 61 7 3255 0254
Fax: 61 7 3255 0362
Email: info@brisbanewritersfestival. com.au
17- 21 September 2008
Welcome to authors attending the 2008 Brisbane Writers’ Festival. The line-up includes a talented array of both international and local writers: Lawrence Hill, Richard Holmes, Sun Shuyun, Bruce Beresford, Anna Campbell, Steven Carroll, Steven Conte, Jackie French, Paul Ham, Angelo Loukakis, General Jim Molan and Ian Townsend.
Someone Knows My Name by Lawrence Hill won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize 2008 and the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. A former journalist with the Globe and Mail and parliamentary correspondent for the Winnipeg Free Press, Hill also speaks French and Spanish. He has lived and worked across Canada, in Baltimore, and in Spain and France, and travelled three times to work as a volunteer in the West African countries Mali, Cameroon and Niger. He is the author of the novels Any Known Blood and Some Great Thing, and the non-fiction work Black Berry, Sweet Juice: On Being Black and White in Canada. He co-authored, with Joshua Key, The Deserter's Tale: The Story of an Ordinary Soldier Who Walked Away from the War in Iraq. He lives in Canada with his wife and five children.
Richard Holmes is one of the most revered non-fiction writers working today. Born in London, he is writes and reviews regularly for various journals and newspapers, including the New York Review of Books. He has won numerous awards for his biographies of Coleridge, Shelley and Johnson. He is also editor of a new series of editions of classic English biographies that includes work by Samuel Johnson, Daniel Defoe and William Godwin. His new book, The Age of Wonder, is an examination of the life and work of the scientists of the Romantic age, who laid the foundations of modern science. It will be published by HarperCollins in September. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a Fellow of the British Academy and was awarded an OBE in 1992. He was awarded an honorary Litt.D. in 2000 by the University of East Anglia, where he was appointed Professor of Biographical Studies in September 2001.
Sun Shuyun was born in China in the 1960s. She graduated from Beijing University and won a scholarship to Oxford. She is a film and television producer and her previous books include The Long March and Ten Thousand Miles without a Cloud. For the past decade she has divided her time between Beijing and London. In July 2006, Shu was given the opportunity to record what life is really like for the people of Tibet and she seized the chance to spend a year in a remote town in the Tibetan mountain area. The result is her new book, A Year in Tibet, in which she explores the intimate details of the lives of a shaman and his family, a viillage doctor, a Party worker, a hotel manager, and a rickshaw driver. Through them she captures the tensions between Chinese and Tibetans, between an ancient and an alien culture, faith and science, continuity and modernisation.
Film director Bruce Beresford has made some of Australia’s best-known and most interesting films, including The Adventures of Barry Mackenzie, Breaker Morant, Don’s Party and Puberty Blues, and has had international success with Driving Miss Daisy, Black Robe and Paradise Road. His recent book, Josh Hartnett Definitely Wants to do This … true stories from a life in the screen trade, is a candid look at the world of celebrity, power and international film–making from one of cinema’s most accomplished practitioners.
Anna Campbell decided to become a writer shortly after she learned to walk. Then she discovered romance novels, and she knew she just had to tell stories abut love and hope and triumph over adversity. Not forgetting gorgeous, passionate men. After various jobs and as much travel as she could afford, including a stay of several years in the UK, Anna has now settled near the sea on the east coast of Australia. In Untouched, the kidnapped Grace Paget and loner Lord Sheene must both revolt against the strange set of circumstances that have forced them together.
Steven Carroll was born in Melbourne and grew up in Glenroy. He went to La Trobe University and taught English in high schools before playing in bands in the 1970s. After leaving the music scene he began writing as a playwright and became the theatre critic for the Sunday Age. After lecturing at RMIT, Steven now writes full time and lives in Brunswick, Victoria. His novels The Art of the Engine Driver and The Gift of Speed were both shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award. The Art of the Engine Driver was also shortlisted for France’s Prix Femina. In 2008 The Time We Have Taken won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best Book, South–East Asia and South Pacific region, as well as the 2008 Miles Franklin Award, Australia's most prestigious literary prize.
Steven Conte was born in 1966 and raised in Guyra in rural New South Wales. After six years of boarding school he lived and worked in Europe, and his first published short stories drew on his experiences as a traveller. He has lived in Sydney and Canberra and most recently in Melbourne. Bank teller, waiter, barman, cleaner, life model, public servant, taxi driver, receptionist, university tutor, editor and book reviewer are some of the jobs with which he has supported his writing. His debut novel, The Zookeepers War, has been shortlisted for the inaugural Prime Minister’s literary award for fiction.
Jackie French’s writing career spans eighteen years. She is one of the few writers to win both literary and children’s choice awards. Josephine Wants to Dance was awarded Book of the Year by the Australian Book Association in 2006 as well as the 2007 ABIA (Australian Book Industry Awards) Book of the Year Award. Hitler’s Daughter won the 2000 CBC Book of the Year for Younger Readers and the UK Wow! Award and has been listed as a ‘Blue Ribbon’ book in the USA. The bestselling Diary of a Wombat has won a swag of awards in Australia and the US, and been published in nine other territories. Her most recent books include How High Can a Kangaroo Hop, A Rose for the Anzac Boys and The Camel who crossed Australia.
Paul Ham is the author of the highly acclaimed Kokoda (HarperCollins, 2004) and the Australian correspondent for the London Sunday Times. He was born and educated in Australia and lives in Sydney, having spent several years working in Britain as a journalist and publisher. In November 2007 he released his second book, Vietnam, which has been lauded by both Vietnam Veterans and critics alike, and shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for non-fiction. Vietnam is the definitive account of Australia’s involvement in the war. Drawing on hundreds of unpublished sources as well as interviews with soldiers, politicians, medical practitioners, aid providers, entertainers and the Vietnamese people, Paul Ham reconstructs the epic history of a campaign that disfigured a country and divided the world, nations, families and friends.
Angelo Loukakis was born in Australia and has worked as a teacher, editor, publisher and scriptwriter. He is the author of a children's book on Greeks in Australia, and a travel book on Norfolk Island, as well as three books of fiction: For the Patriarch, Vernacular Dreams and Messenger. For the Patriarch received a NSW Premier's Literary Award and was set on the NSW HSC syllabus between 1986 and 2001. Angelo's parents came to Australia from Crete, and his most recent novel, The Memory of Tides, honours their generation.
General Jim Molan joined the Australian Army in 1968 and has served in Jakarta, East Timor, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, managing 300,000 American, British, Iraqi and Australian troops. Among his many tasks, he would oversee the first democratic elections in Iraq. It would prove the most formidable challenge of his forty-year career. In his gripping new book, Running the War in Iraq, Major General Molan gives a stark insider’s account of modern warfare and all it entails: the ghastly body count, the complex decisions that will mean life or death, the divide between political masters and foot soldiers - and the small, hard-won triumphs.
Ian Townsend is a journalist with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. His first novel, Affection, was shortlisted for the 2005 Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards, the 2006 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for a first novel, and the 2006 Colin Roderick Award. He’s also the winner of two Australian Eureka Prizes for science and medical research journalism, and is the 2006 John Oxley Library research fellow. In 2006, he was long-listed for the Dublin IMPAC literary award. His new novel, The Devil’s Eye, which will be launched by HarperCollins at this year’s festival, has been inspired by events surrounding one of the most powerful storms in history, a hurricane named Mahina, which struck Queensland in 1899. Ian lives in Brisbane with his family.
The Brisbane Writers Festival office is located at 12 Merivale St, South Brisbane, Queensland 4101, Australia.
Our mailing address is:
PO Box 3453
South Brisbane
Queensland 4101
Australia
Phone: 61 7 3255 0254
Fax: 61 7 3255 0362
Email: info@brisbanewritersfestival. com.au
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