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Authors

Click on the author's name for further details, bio and work.

Jo Buchanan

Jo Buchanan has been a primary and secondary teacher of children with special needs and on-set tutor of child actors; a clinical hypnotherapist, counsellor and psychotherapist. She has been a keynote speaker at Mind, Body, Spirit festivals and has appeared on television and radio.

Jo also speaks to carers and families affected by mental illness on behalf of SANE Australia. Her handbook for carers, entitled Copping it Sweet addresses the problems faced by those charged with caring for a relative suffering physical or mental infirmity and provides practical coping strategies for those carers.

The new edition of Jo Buchanan’s book Wings of Madness is now available. It is the moving story of how the author unearths the historical truth about mental illness in her family. In June 1990, at the age of 23, her son, Logie winner Miles Buchanan was at the pinnacle of an outstanding career in film, theatre and television. His battle with depression was masked by alcohol and drugs and led to a breakdown and attempts at suicide that became public and brought his career to an end. Jo sought answers to her son’s problems and the process led her to some startling discoveries about her family history in the archives of Kew and Sunbury lunatic asylums.

Copies of Copping it Sweet and Wings of Madness are available through the author. Enquiries to: jobuchanan@y7mail.com

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Craig Cormick

Craig Cormick is a Canberra based author and science communicator. He has a PhD in creative communication of history, has published over a dozen books and his short stories have been published in Meanjin, Island, Westerly and many other literary magazines. He is a former chair of the ACT Writers' Centre and his writing awards include the ACT Book of the Year Award (1999) for Unwritten Histories and a Queensland Premier's Literary Award (2006) for A Funny Thing Happened at 27,000 Feet.

His sea voyages have involved travelling to Iceland from Norway, voyaging to Australia's three stations in Antarctica and sailing aboard the New Endeavour.

Craig's latest book Shipwrecks of the Southern Seas will be released by Murdoch Books on 1 December 2011

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Dr Sarah Edelman

Dr Sarah Edelman is a clinical psychologist in private practice. She has previously worked as a researcher and lecturer at the University of Technology, Sydney and now conducts workshops on the use of Cognitive Behaviour Therapy at Sydney University Centre for Continuing Education. She also runs training programs for psychologists, GPs and in the corporate sector. Sarah has published articles on the use of CBT in professional journals as well as the mainstream media. She is a frequent guest on ABC radio – Richard Glover’s Drive and Tony Delroy’s Nightlife.

Sarah Edelman’s book Change your Thinking (ABC Books, 2006) provides practical strategies to help overcome stress, negative emotions and self-defeating behaviour using Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT). It demonstrates how to challenge negative self-talk and develop a more balanced and healthy perspective in potentially stressful situations. These strategies enable the reader to deal more effectively with upsetting emotions such as anxiety, depression, anger and frustration.

The title of the UK edition is Change your Thinking with CBT: Overcome Stress, Combat Anxiety & Change your Life, published by Vermillion, an imprint of Random House.

Rights available: Asia (excluding China); Middle East and South America

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Howard Goldenberg

Howard Goldenberg comes from a long line of fabulists and dreamers. On his father’s side he is descended from the Gaon (genius) of Vilna, and on his mother’s side from Cyril Coleman, pearl diver, polo player and one-stringed violinist, of Broome.

Howard reads poetry, eats voraciously and is a bold experimental cook. He has run thirty-six marathons and sixty-three circuits of the sun. “Life is like the marathon, he says, “an undistinguished passage made rich by the encounters along the way.”

In his new book Raft (Hybrid Publishers, 2009) Howard Goldenberg presents a collection of unnerving true stories of his experiences as a locum doctor in remote Aboriginal communities and inside an outback prison. On these visits he has observed and recorded Aboriginal Australians’ lives without resorting to simplification or glib solutions.

“Goldenberg is both observer and physician, writer and participant, tenacious in his quest for understanding and lived experience; a seeker with a passionate belief in the power of the story.” Arnold Zable.

To read more about Howard Goldenberg click here

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Alan Gould

Alan Gould is a poet, essayist and novelist. In 2001 he was co-winner with Peter Carey of the Courier-Mail Book of the Year Award for his novel The Schoonermaster’s Dance. He was also awarded ACT Book of the Year for this work.

In 2006 Alan was awarded the Grace Leven Prize for The Past Completes Me: Selected Poems 1973 – 2003 (UQP). His latest collection of poems, Folk Tunes is published by Salt.

Alan’s latest book is a novel, The Lakewoman (Australian Scholarly Press, 2009) The Lakewoman is a story set in war, but not about war. It tells the story of Alec, an Australian in the Allied Airborne forces who, providentially, is rescued from drowning on the night of D-Day by a woman, Viva, and the relationship that develops between the two on that night, and in the post-war decades. It is a love story at one level. At a deeper level it takes the Arthurian myth of La Dame Du Lac to study the psychology of an enchantment and show how a man’s life became estranged from its early promise so that it might find a more difficult, a more austere fulfilment.

“A moving love story that is also a deeply absorbing poetic meditation on the moral journey of a solitary man. A brilliant achievement.” Alex Miller.

For more information on Alan and his publications go to: www.alangouldwriter.com

Rights available: World rights for the following titles – Close Ups, The Enduring Disguises, The Schoonermaster’s Dance and The Tazyrik Year.

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Anthony Gunn

Anthony Gunn is a registered psychologist, specialising in treating anxiety and phobias. He is the author of several books – his most recent, Raising Confident, Happy Children: 40 Ways to Help your Child Succeed (Hardie Grant) was published in 2010.

Anthony Gunn’s sixth book is now available. Entitled Be Confident: Come out of your Shell at Work and Play, (Penguin Australia) it is a straightforward and effective 10-step guide to improving your social confidence and living life to the fullest

. For more information on other titles by Anthony Gunn click here. See also www.fearispower.com

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Noeline Kyle

Dr Noeline Kyle has published widely in the field of women's history, educational history, biography, Australian history and family history. She is Honorary Professor at the Nursing History Research Unit, University of Sydney. She also teaches family history writing courses at public libraries, through the U3A, WEA, University continuing education and to family history societies throughout Australia and overseas.

Noeline Kyle has maintained a strong interest in supporting the research and writing of family historians through her previous publications Tracing Family History in Australia (Methuen, 1985); We Should Have Listened to Grandma: Women and Family History (Allen & Unwin, 1988); The Family History Writing Book (1993, 2001) and Writing Family History Made Very Easy (Allen & Unwin, 2007). Writing Family History Made Very Easy is now available as an eBook.

Noeline's latest book How to Write and Publish Your Family Story in 10 Easy Steps demystifies the process of how to get a family story published. It has practical advice drawn from more than thirty years of the author working with family and local historians and teaching classes on writing family history, memoir and biography – this book has everything you ever wanted to know about writing, editing, publishing, printing and promoting your family story. It takes you through all of the traditional paper publishing strategies as well as e-book and e-publishing in one easy, accessible and very readable book. Don't miss out on this one.

Click here for 20% discount on Noeline's new book

For further information click here or go to http://www.writingfamilyhistory.com.au

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Terence Lindsey

Terence Lindsey is a zoologist and ornithologist who has written and produced an extensive range of books, articles and encyclopaedia entries for leading natural history publishers around the world as well as a number of films. Terence was born in England, raised in Canada and has travelled widely throughout Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific over the past thirty years.

Terence’s latest book is Albatrosses. Published in mid-2009 by CSIRO in their Natural History Series, it outlines the life histories of these spectacular birds whose most distinctive characteristic is that they ride storms. Aside from a few of their close relatives among petrels and shearwaters, they are the only animals to do this.

Click here for more information

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David Mason

David Mason holds a B.A. (Hons), an LLB and an LLM from the Australian National University. He is currently a Major in the Australian Army Reserve Legal Corps and recently served as Advisor to the Iraqi Ministry of Defence and for a period, was the personal adviser to the Iraqi Minister of Defence. For his service while posted to Iraq, the United States Army awarded him the Outstanding Civilian Service Medal. He has also worked as a civilian contractor and an adviser with the Iraqi Ministry of Interior on the Rule of Law.

In March 1998 he set out to cross Australia from east to west at its widest point. Using camels to carry his supplies he became the first recorded person to walk solo across the Simpson Desert. He assisted in raising over $1 million for the Fred Hollows Foundation, was awarded the gold medal of the Australian Geographic Society in 1999 (as Australia’s Adventurer of the Year).

So it is no surprise to know that it is in David’s nature to seek out adventure and challenge. In 1988 he joined the famous French Foreign Legion. He stayed for five years and served time in the elite Parachute Regiment. With the motto ‘March or Die’ the Legion has a history of pain, grief and glory.

In his book Marching with the Devil: Legends, Glory & Lies in the French Foreign Legion David Mason exposes the reality behind the generally held romantic notion of the Legion: the adventure, the danger, the drinking, the fighting and the lies that sustain the legend.

Marching with the Devil will be published by Hachette Australia in September 2010.

Glen Booth & Alistair McGlashan

Glen Booth and Alistair McGlashan are well-known fishing writers with many years' experience of Bluewater fishing. Their book, The Complete Guide to Gamefishing was released on 1 November 2011 by HarperCollins.

Glen Booth has visited many of the world's fishing hotspots as an angler, deckhand, writer and photographer. He has worked in the fishing media for over twenty-five years.

He has contributed to several books on game fishing , and wrote Fishing for Beginners (Pan Macmillan, Australia ) with Andrew Etting hausen back in 2006. Glen is the editor of FishLife Magazine.

Alistair McGlashan's love of fishing ultimately enabled him to leave the corporate world and turn his passion into a business . He regularly contributes articles and images to dozens of magazines both locally and internationally as well as fishing reports for radio.

He is the author of four books and has produced the ground-breaking DVD range, Strikezone which is now a TV series.

For more about Al see www.almcglashan.com

Norman McGreevy

Norman McGreevy was brought up and educated in Glasgow, Scotland and now lives quietly in Melbourne, Australia with his wife and a small menagerie. For the past ten years Norman has worked with universities, corporations and government agencies, writing, designing and delivering information technology training and communication for groups of often bewildered executives. He now tries to combine his passion for relaxation and walking, so far with limited success.

Norman’s first book, Mr McGreevy’s Absolute Howlers was published in 2006 by Allen & Unwin and in 2007 in the UK by Constable & Robinson under the title Must Try Harder. A collection of schoolchildren’s grammatical and spelling howlers, it has sold over 30,000 copies.

A second volume will be published by Constable & Robinson on 30 September. It is entitled Could Do Better and is a brilliantly entertaining book that unearths the children’s mangled attempts to get to grips with the English language – from surreal spelling errors and grammatical catastrophes to cringeworthy malapropisms, Could Do Better has the lot.

"An octopus is a person who hopes for the best".

"Rhetoric is a form of arithmetic".

"Noah’s wife was called Joan of Ark. He built an ark which the animals came on to in pears"..

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Peter Mitchell

Peter Mitchell worked for the Department of Immigration from 1990 to 2003. He was, amongst other things, a long-term Compliance officer, Manager of the Villawood Immigration Detention Centre and, in 1999, Manager of the Kosovar and East Timorese ‘Operation Safe Haven’ at East Hills.

Peter also has an extensive history of published poetry and original song performance and has reviewed poetry for TEXT: The Journal of the Australian Association of Writing Programs (2005). His triple compact disc and song-memoir The Great Unknown (Sydney: Mystery Woman Management, 1995) evokes the art and life of a hard working independent rock band in Sydney in the 1980s.

Peter’s book The Compassionate Bastard: Memoir of an Immigration Officer will be published in by Penguin on 29 August.

Leonie Norton

Leonie Norton is a practicing and exhibiting professional botanical artist, Sydney’s most prominent and highly qualified educator and one of Australia’s leading artists in her field.

She has published articles in Artist’s Palette, Australian Artist, Our Gardens Magazine, Queensland Homes and various local newspapers, as well as illustrating a series of botanical herbs in Nature & Health Magazine since 2005.

Leonie has won many awards and exhibits widely. Her botanical paintings can be found in private collections in Australia and overseas.

Leonie teaches in community colleges, adult education centres and art centres and conducts specialised weekend workshops in Sydney on various topics, extensive workshops in New Zealand and teaches at week-long Summer Schools in regional NSW, New Zealand, Fiji, Canada and the UK.

For more information see www.botanicalart.com

Leonie’s first book is entitled Women of Flowers: Botanical Art in Australia from the 1830s to the 1960s (National Library of Australia, 2009). In it she pays tribute to the women flower painters and botanical artists of colonial Australia, who made enormous contributions to recording native plant life. The women enthusiastically recorded the unique antipodean flora in diaries, albums and sketchbooks. Several of these women painted subjects other than flowers; Women of Flowers is a celebration of their skill, interest and enjoyment in depicting Australian flora. Beautifully produced, it is sumptuously illustrated with material drawn from the National Library’s collections.

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Dr Julian Pepperell

Dr Julian Pepperell is probably Australia’s best-known marine biologist, especially in the world of recreational fishing. He is the author of numerous popular and scientific articles on marine fishes and writes popular columns in national fishing magazines. He has made many radio and television appearances including in his own segment on Escape with ET among many others.

Julian Pepperell’s new book is entitled Fishes of the Open Ocean: A Natural History & Illustrated Guide (UNSW Press, 2009). It is the result of ten years’ work and provides detailed information on all major oceanic fishes – the billfishes, tunas and pelagic sharks and rays as well as insights into many lesser known ones, including flying fish, giant sunfish, fang-toothed lancetfish and the enigmatic oarfish.

Global distribution maps, striking illustrations from renowned artist Guy Harvey and stunning images from the world’s leading underwater photographers allow for ready species identification. Divers, anglers, mariners, students and anyone with an interest in the ocean and its diversity of life will find this book an essential reference.

For more information on Julian click here

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Peter Rowland

Peter Rowland has worked as an assistant in the Ornithology department of the Australian Museum, Sydney and in the field, travelling widely throughout Australia studying and photographing its birds and other wildlife. He is the author of a number of books and contributor to many others – click here for full details.

Peter’s latest book is Bowerbirds (CSIRO 2009) published in CSIRO’s Natural History Series. It condenses published knowledge into a format that will suit natural history enthusiasts at any level. While the emphasis is on Australian bowerbirds, the New Guinea species are also included. The book also contains more than fifty illustrations, including colour photographs of each Australian species, their bowers, displays and distributional maps.

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Alan Shadrake

Alan Shadrake is a renowned veteran investigative journalist and author whose fifty-year career has taken him around the world.

His first major book The Yellow Pimpernels told of escape stories across the Berlin Wall and was the subject of a BBC documentary. Subsequent publications have delved into a variety of subjects including an exposé of life in a Soviet gulag, the story of the boy poisoner Graham Young and, with Linda Lee, The Life and Tragic Death of Bruce Lee.

Alan's appetite for unearthing the facts and presenting unpalatable truths remains undiminished. His new book Once a Jolly Hangman: True Stories from Singapore's Death Row will be published in Australia and the UK in May 2011 by Murdoch Books.

Rights available: Foreign language, excluding Singapore & Malaysia.

Stephany Steggall

Dr Stephany Steggall has a PhD in Australian literature from the University of Queensland. She is the author of several biographies of Australian literary figures including Can I Call You Colin?: The Authorised Biography of Colin Thiele, 2004; The Loved and the Lost: the life of Ivan Southall, 2006 and she has compiled and edited Yours Sincerely, Colin Thiele, 2008, a collection of children’s letters written to Thiele. She is also a regular freelance contributor to major metropolitan newspapers and magazines.

Stephany’s latest book, Bruce Dawe: Life Cycle (Ginninderra Press, 2009) acknowledges one of Australia’s best known poets and one of his best known poems. This biography is the first time that Dawe’s life has been interpreted in full through his poetry, and the poems take on new significance when read in this context. The subject is telling some of the story in his own words – in poems.

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