WRITERS

The 2010 Guest Writers at Back to Booktown

Sonya Hartnett

Sonya Hartnett is the internationally acclaimed author of several novels, including Thursday's Child, winner of the 2002 Guardian Children's Fiction Prize, and Forest, winner of the 2002 Children's Book Council of Australia Book of the Year: Older Readers. In 2003, her adult novel, Of a Boy, won The Age Book of the Year and was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award.

In 2000 and again in 2003, Sonya Hartnett has been named one of The Sydney Morning Herald Young Novelists of the Year. Her work has been published internationally with editions available in the UK, US, Canada, Germany, Italy, Norway and Denmark.

In 2004, The Silver Donkey was published to great critical acclaim. It has won the 2005 Brisbane Courier Mail award for young readers and was CBC Book of the Year (Young readers) in 2005.

Surrender was published in 2005. It was shortlisted for The Age Book of the Year Award and the Aurealis Award - Fantasy Division in 2005.

In 2008 Sonya was the recipient of The Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award. The prize is awarded to authors, illustrators, narrators and/or promoters of reading whose work reflects the spirit of Astrid Lindgren. It is the first time this award has gone to an Australian.

Toni Jordan

Toni Jordan was born in Brisbane in 1966. Her debut novel Addition was first published in 2008 to critical acclaim. It was shortlisted for the Barbara Jefferis Award and longlisted for the Miles Franklin in 2009. It has been published into sixteen countries worldwide.

Toni lives in Melbourne where she works part-time as a freelance copywriter, and has a column in the Age. Toni is currently working on her next novel.

Toni is speaking at an event sponsored by the Melbourne PEN Centre to honour the 50th Anniversary of the Writers in Prison Program of International PEN.

Nigel Krauth

Nigel Krauth is a multi-award winning novelist. He has won the Australian/Vogel Literary Award and the NSW Sate Literary Award for Fiction (The Christina Stead Prize) and was shortlisted the Age Book of the Year Award. His books include Matilda, My Darling (co-winner of the Australian/Vogel Literary Award), The Bathing-Machine Called the Twentieth Century, JF Was Here (winner of the New South Wales State Literary Award), and Freedom Highway. He is a regular reviewer for the Australian literary pages, runs the Griffith University creative writing course, co-edits the international jounral TEXT and has been a member of the judging panels of many of Australia's top literary awards.

Stefan Laszczuk

Stefan Laszczuk's latest novel I Dream of Magda won the 2007 The Australian/Vogel Literary Award and was praised by The Age as 'astonishingly humorous and assured'.

His first novel, The Goddamn Bus of Happiness, was the winner of the South Australia Festival of Literature Award for an unpublished manuscript and was published by Wakefield Press in 2004 .

His collection of short stories The New Cage won the S.A Writers' Centre Short Story Award in 2002. He has also had his work published in various anthologies. He completed a PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Adelaide in 2009 and is currently working on another novel and co-writing a play.

Margaret Simons

Margaret Simons is an award-winning freelance journalist and the author of seven books and numerous essays and articles. She is also a part-time lecturer at Swinburne University of Technology.

Her most recent work includes The Content Makers - Understanding the Future of the Australian Media (2007), and Faith, Money and Power - What the Religious Revival Means for Politics (2007).

Simons has been a finalist in the 2007 Walkley Awards for her essay Buried in the Labyrinth, published by Griffith Review. Her other works include the prize-winning examination of the Hindmarsh Island bridge affair, The Meeting of the Waters, (2003). She also wrote Latham's World, an investigation into the then Leader of the Opposition, Mark Latham, published in the lead up to the 2004 federal election.

Simons is presently working with former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser on his memoirs, to be published by University of Melbourne Press in 2009.

Margaret Simons web site

Arnold Zable

Arnold Zable is an award winning writer, storyteller, educator, and human rights advocate. His books include Jewels and Ashes, (1991) which won five Australian literary awards, and depicts his journey to Poland to trace his ancestry. Zable’s best selling novel, Café Scheherazade, (2001) depicts the lives of former refugees who now meet in a coffee shop in a seaside suburb in Melbourne. The Fig Tree, (2002) is a book of true stories set in Greece, Eastern Europe, inner Melbourne and outback Australia. The Fig Tree CD, a musical companion to the book, won the National Folk Recording award in 2004. His latest novel Sea of Many Returns, (2008) is a profound meditation on displacement and exile — a story that affirms the enduring resonance of the Odyssey for voyagers of all times.

Zable is the author of numerous feature articles, columns, short stories, reviews and essays. His work regularly appears in The Age and a range of journals. Zable speaks and writes with passion about memory and history, displacement and community. He has conducted numerous writing workshops and has been a visiting lecturer in creative writing at Deakin, Melbourne, Monash, RMIT, La Trobe and Victoria universities.

Arnold Zable's website

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