Fiona McFarlane grew up in Sydney, Australia. Her first novel, The Night Guest, will be published in 15 languages and has been shortlisted for the the Miles Frankline Award, the Stella Prize, Australia’s prize for writing by women, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for First Fiction.

Eimear McBride grew up in the west of Ireland and studied acting at Drama Centre London. Her 20s were spent temping and travelling. At 27 she wrote her first novel A Girl is a Half-formed Thing and spent the next decade attempting to have it published. It was finally picked up by a small press […]

Reinhard Kleist was born in 1970 near Cologne. He studied at the school for Graphic Design in Munster, where he graduated with the silk screen album Abenteuer eines Weichenstellers by the author H.C. Artmann. While studying, Reinhard worked on the two books Lovecraft and Dorian. He now lives in Prenzlauer Berg/Berlin and works in the same […]

Kosal Khiev is a poet, tattoo artist, and survivor of the US prison system. Born in a Thai refugee camp, Kosal’s family fled to the US in 1981. At age 16, Kosal was arrested in a gang fight, charged with attempted murder, then sentenced to 16 years. While in prison, spoken word became his creative […]

Kate Holden was born in 1972 and went to progressive community schools and the University of Melbourne, where she studied classics and literature. She also has a graduate diploma in professional writing and editing and a Masters in Creative Writing from RMIT. Her first book, the best-selling In My Skin: A memoir, was published by […]

Dwitra J Ariana – aka ‘Dadap’ – is a young, award-winning documentary filmmaker, who is captivated by the struggle of diaspora communities, the importance of local wisdoms and the nature of inter-religious relationships. One of his documentaries focuses on a small Hindu temple in Bangli that is also being used by Javanese Muslims for praying […]

Mem Fox is a retired Associate Professor of Literacy Studies (Flinders University, South Australia), and also Australia’s most highly regarded picture-book author.  Her first publication, Possum Magic, is the best selling children’s book in Australia.  It is thirty years old this year (2013) and is still available in hard-back. She has written many other internationally best-selling books […]

Director Rolf de Heer has been writing (and directing) feature films for 30 years now, and in that time he’s managed to complete 14 of them (there are numbers of others that haven’t been completed, one way or the other). The films are usually low of budget but high in impact; despite conventional wisdom that […]

Tim Cope is an award-winning adventurer, author and filmmaker with a special interest in the traditional cultures of Central Asia and Russia. He has studied as a wilderness guide in the Finnish subarctic, ridden a bicycle across Russia to China, and rowed a boat along the Yenisey River through Siberia to the Arctic Ocean. Tim’s […]

Tim Flannery has published over 130 peer-reviewed scientific papers and has named 25 living and 50 fossil mammal species. His 32 books include the award-winning The Future Eaters and The Weather Makers, which has been translated into over 20 languages. He has made numerous documentaries and regularly reviews for the New York Review of Books. […]