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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 an award winning Canberra author and journalist. He has published and edited several books with both small and mainstream publishers and his writing awards include the Queensland Premier’s Award (Steele Rudd Award) in 2006 for his collection of short stories A Funny Thing Happened at 27,000 Feet … and the ACT Book of the Year Award in 1999 for Unwritten Histories. He has also won the Max Harris Literary Award (1998), and was short-listed both for a Queensland Premier’s Literary Award in 2004 and for The Australian/Vogel Award in 1994 for the novel Of One Blood, which was published in 2007.

Craig has published ten books and over 100 short stories in anthologies, literary journals and newspapers, including Meanjin, Island, Westerly, Scarp, Overland, 4-W, Redoubt and The Phoenix Review. He has also published over a dozen literary articles and essays and has taught creative writing and public relations at the University of Canberra. He has been Chair of the ACT Writers’ Centre and in 2006 was a Writer-in-Residence at the University Sains Malaysia in Penang and in 2008 he travelled to Antarctica as an Antarctic Arts Fellow.

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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, Fix Your Phobia in 90 Minutes (Penguin) was published in May 2009.

His newest title Raising Confident, Happy Children: 40 Ways to help your Child Succeed (Hardie Grant) is now available.

Children who believe in their own ability are more likely to succeed than children with natural ability who don’t believe in themselves. Anthony Gunn knows how difficult it can be to raise children with a sense of strength and courage. In Raising Confident, Happy Children, he offers forty helpful approaches to common situations like dealing with a death in the family and coping with indecision. He guides you through examples and exercises so that you and your child can find your way to a relaxed and happy relationship.

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 within the University of Sydney’s continuing education program and through the NSW Writers’ Centre as well as offering seminars and workshops to family history societies throughout Australia and overseas.

Her latest book is A Greater Guilt: Constance Emilie Kent & the Road Murder (Boolarong Press, 2009)

The Road Murder that backgrounds this story was a rare case of fratricide that occurred in Wiltshire, England in 1860. A sister confessed to the killing, a gruesome, dreadful killing, of a defenceless small child – her three-year old half brother. While this part of the story is crucial, it is only one part of Constance Emilie Kent’s story. On her release from prison she migrated to Australia where she trained as a nurse at the Alfred Hospital in Melbourne and had a career spanning more than fifty years.

Based on years of historical research the author has reconstructed the astonishing events of the Road murder and the lives of the Kent family and their descendants and writes a full and complete biography of Constance Kent, from her birth in 1844 to her death in 1944. This book offers new and controversial conclusions about the perpetrator of the crime, about family secrets, the myths of women’s lives and the making up of history.

For further information click here or go to www.familyhistorywriting.bigpondhosting.com

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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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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 book, Mr McGreevy’s Howlers (Allen & Unwin, 2006) is a side-splitting collection of schoolchildren’s English grammatical and spelling howlers. This is the perfect gift for those with a love of language and a sense of humour. Note: Please heed the warning on the cover – reading too many in one sitting may cause injury! E.g. “Letters in sloping type are in hysterics.” “Adolescence is the stage between puberty and adultery.”

Mr McGreevy’s Howlers is now available as an eBook.

Watch this space for another volume of howlers.

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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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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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