Guest Writers

Andrew Taylor

Andrew Taylor is Emeritus and Honorary Professor at Edith Cowan University, Perth, Western Australia. He is the author of Reading Australian Poetry (UQP 1987) and numerous critical articles. His Collected Poems were published in 2004 by Salt Publishing, Cambridge, UK. The Unhaunting, a collection of new poems, will appear from Salt in June 2009.

Glen Phillips

Glen Phillips was born in Southern Cross, Western Australia, and spent his earliest years in country towns. Among his recent books are: Shanghai Suite (2009), Singing Granites (2008) with Anne Born, Contrary Rhetoric (2008), a co-edited collection of John Kinsella's lectures on landscape and language, Lines in the Sand (2008), a co-edited collection of new WA poetry and prose, and Spring Burning: New and Selected Poems (1999). His Sacrificing the Leaves (1988) and Lovesongs, Lovescenes (1991) were among earlier of his ten poetry collections. Twenty anthologies have included his work. Glen has poems published nationally and internationally and his work has been translated into several languages. Numerous poems and stories have also appeared in more than fifty anthologies, journals and newspapers in Australia, America, Britain, Italy, India, Korea and China. He has been invited to perform at poetry readings in most of the above-mentioned countries and in Singapore, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Denmark and Switzerland. In 2006 he completed a PhD in Creative Writing at Edith Cowan University, entitled Land Whisperings and a Poetics of Newplace and Birthplace. Currently he is working on a host of book projects, including new collections of poetry, a volume of short stories, several novels and some books for children.

Anita Heiss

Dr Anita Heiss is a member of the Wiradjuri nation of central New South Wales and is one of Australia's most prolific and well-known authors of Indigenous literature. Her published works include the historical novel Who Am I? The Diary of Mary Talence, Sydney 1937, the poetry collection Token Koori, satirical social commentary Sacred Cows, non-fiction text Dhuuluu-Yala (To Talk Straight) - Publishing Aboriginal Literature, and a children's book entitled Me and My Mum. Anita has also edited editions of Southerly, Five Bells and the anthology Life in Gadigal Country. In 2008, Anita co-edited with Peter Minter The Macquarie PEN Anthology of Aboriginal Literature, which showcases 81 different Aboriginal writers, playwrights, storytellers, poets, songwriters and leaders. In 2007 Anita released three titles: Not Meeting Mr Right (Random House) for which she won the Deadly Award for Outstanding Contribution to Literature. Her poetry collection also released this year I'm not racist, but… (Salt Publishing) won the Scanlon Prize for Indigenous Poetry and the kids novel Yirra and her deadly dog Demon (ABC Books), was launched at the 2007 Sydney Writers Festival by Her Excellency Marie Bashir, Governor of NSW. Anita has performed her works nationally (Sydney Writers' Festival, Perth International Arts Festival, Adelaide Writers' Week, Byron Bay Writers' Festival, Message Sticks, Brisbane Writers Festival, Somerset Festival of Literature, Watermark, and Wordstorm, among others) and internationally in Spain, Austria, the USA, Canada, Fiji, Japan, New Zealand, China and New Caledonia.

Robert Sullivan

Robert Sullivan (Nga Puhi/Kai Tahu/Ngati Raukawa and Galway Irish) appears in Best New Zealand Poems 2002, 2005, 2007, and coedited with Anne Kennedy Best New Zealand Poems 2006. Internationally, his poetry appears in Harvard Review, Ploughshares, Berkeley Poetry Review, Manoa, and Moving Worlds. He won several New Zealand literary awards for his poetry, children's writing and editing. His poetry collections include Star Waka, Captain Cook in the Underworld, Voice Carried My Family, and in press, Shout Ha! to the Sky (Salt Publishing, UK). He co-edited Whetu Moana: Contemporary Polynesian Poems in English with Albert Wendt and Reina Whaitiri. His scholarly work appears in Kunapipi: Journal of Postcolonial Writing, Ka Mate Ka Ora: a New Zealand Journal of Poetry and Poetics, Landfall, the monograph Figuring the Pacific, and The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics (forthcoming). He has recently read and lectured in New Delhi at the Chotro Indigenous Peoples Conference, at UC Berkeley, at the University of Hong Kong, at Goethe University in Frankfurt, and at UCLA. He is Associate Professor of English at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa.

Kathleen Mary Fallon

Fallon Kathleen Mary Fallon has just completed a three-part project where she explores her experiences as the white foster mother of a Torres Strait Islander foster son with disabilities. The project consisted of a feature film, Call Me Mum, which was short-listed for the NSW Premier's Prize and an AWGI for script writing. Call Me Mum was nominated for three AFI Awards in 2007 and won the Best Female Support Actress Award. The three-part project also includes a novel Paydirt (UWAPress, 2007) and a play, Buyback which she directed at the Carlton Courthouse in 2006. Her motivation for this project was to give a voice to the white foster/adoptive parent; a voice rarely heard in the Australian cultural landscape. Her novel, Working Hot, (Sybylla 1989, Vintage/Random House, 2000) won a Victoria Premier's Prize and her opera, Matricide - the Musical, which she wrote with the composer Elena Kats-Chernin was produced by Chamber Made Opera in 1998. She wrote the text for the concert piece, Laquiem - tales from the mourning of the lac women, for the composer Andrée Greenwell. Laquiem was performed at The Studio at the Sydney Opera House and made into a CD. She has written in a wide variety of mediums and genres, has performed her politically-inspired one-woman performance pieces in a variety of venues and, until recently, was a lecturer in creative writing at the University of Melbourne. She holds a Masters of Literature and Communication from Murdoch University.