Who's Who

Randa Abdel-Fattah (NSW)

Randa Abdel-Fattah is a writer, author and human rights activist. She is the author of Does My Head Look Big in This? and Ten Things I Hate About Me, novels about Muslim girls growing up in Australia. Her latest book, Where the Streets Had a Name (Pan Macmillan), is set in Israel and Palestine.

MT Anderson (USA)

MT Anderson is one of the United States' leading writers for young people. His award-winning books include Feed (2003 Boston Globe-Horn Book Award Honour Book) and The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume 1: The Pox Party (2006 National Book Award for Young People). In February 2009 Walker Books will publish Volume 2: Kingdom of the Waves.

Tristan Bancks (NSW)

Tristan Bancks is the author of Mac Slater, Cool Hunter 1: The Rules of Cool, the story of two friends on a quest to find the meaning of cool. The follow-up novel, Mac Slater 2: I ♥ New York, will also be published by Random House Australia, in February 2009. He also has a young adult novel, it's yr life (co-written with Tempany Deckert), due in June 2009. Tristan has worked as a TV actor and presenter and a filmmaker.

Bernard Beckett (NZ)

Bernard Beckett is one of New Zealand's most outstanding writers and has won many awards. Genesis, his eighth novel, originated during a year he spent studying DNA at the Allan Wilson Centre for Molecular Evolution on a Royal Society Fellowship. Genesis won the 2007 Esther Glen Award and the Young Adult Fiction category at the 2007 NZ Post Book Awards.

Isobelle Carmody (VIC)

Isobelle Carmody is one of Australia's leading writers. She started work on the Obernewtyn Chronicles at the age of 14. Many years, multiple awards and almost 30 books later, she has completed five instalments of the Obernewtyn Chronicles, most recently The Stone Key (Penguin). The sixth and final book in the series, The Sending, is due in September 2009.

Cathy Cassidy (UK)

Cathy Cassidy is one of the UK's most popular writers for children and younger teenagers. Her books, all published by Penguin, include Dizzy, Scarlett and Sundae Girl. Cathy was fiction editor at Jackie magazine, sometimes teaches art at a primary school, and for the past 12 years has been the agony aunt on Shout magazine. Her new novel, Angel Cake, will be launched in May 2009.

Michelle Cooper (NSW)

Michelle Cooper works as a speech pathologist, specialising in learning disabilities and reluctant readers, as well as being the author of two successful books. For Rage of the Sheep (Random House Australia) she won a CBCA NSW mentorship to work with Alyssa Brugman on her manuscript. A Brief History of Montmaray (RHA), her second novel, was on the 2008 Inky Awards shortlist. She is currently writing a sequel to Montmaray.

Anthony Eaton (ACT)

Anthony Eaton grew up in New Guinea and the Cocos Islands. The Darkness won the WA Premier's Prize for Fiction in 2000 and was followed by A New Kind of Dreaming, Fireshadow and the Darklands trilogy. In late 2005 Anthony spent a month in Antarctica to research Into White Silence, his acclaimed novel published by Woolshed Press in 2008.

Tim Flannery (NSW)

Tim Flannery is one of the world's leading writers on global climate change. He is a professor at Macquarie University, is the chairman of the Copenhagen Climate Council and was Australian of the Year in 2007. His books include The Future Eaters, Where Is Here and The Weather Makers (NSW Premier's Literary Awards 2006 Book of the Year). A youth version of the latter, We Are the Weathermakers, was also published by Text Publishing in 2006.

Libby Gleeson (NSW)

Libby Gleeson has written 30 books for children of all ages, including the award-winning picture books with Armin Greder An Ordinary Day (Scholastic) and The Great Bear. Her latest novel for young adults, Mahtab’s Story (A&U), follows a girl’s journey from Afghanistan to Australia. Libby Gleeson chaired the Australian Society of Authors from 1999 to 2001 and in 2007 was awarded an Order of Australia for services to literature.

Alison Goodman (VIC)

In 2008 Alison Goodman's The Two Pearls of Wisdom was published in Australia (HarperCollins) and the UK (David Fickling Books). It is the first part of a two-book series set in an imaginary empire influenced by ancient China and Japan. Goodman's first novel, Singing The Dogstar Blues, was listed as a CBCA Notable Book and an ALA Best Young Adult book in 2004.

Armin Greder (QLD)

Armin Greder was born in Switzerland and migrated to Australia in the early 1970s. He has worked as a graphic designer and currently lectures in art as well as working as an illustrator. Armin is the writer and illustrator of the award-winning The Island (A&U). Armin has also collaborated with Libby Gleeson on many acclaimed picture-books, including The Great Bear (Winner, Bologna Ragazzi Award) and An Ordinary Day (CBCA Picture Book of the Year).

John Green (USA)

John Green is the author of Looking for Alaska, winner of the prestigious Michael L Printz Award. This was followed in 2006 by An Abundance of Katherines. In 2009, his novel Paper Towns will be published in Australia by HarperCollins. John and his brother Hank created the video diary Brotherhood 2.0, which spawned Nerdfighters and the Foundation to Decrease WorldSuck.

Jenny Lovell (VIC)

Jenny Lovell is a director, actor and teacher. She has appeared in many Australian films, including Picnic at Hanging Rock and Gallipoli, and TV series such as Blue Heelers and MDA. In 2002 Jenny was an International Fellow at The Globe Theatre, London. She teaches at Monash University, St Martins Youth Art Centre and the VCA, and is the Centre for Youth Literature's performance coordinator.

Mo Johnson (NSW)

Mo Johnson was born in Glasgow. Her first young adult novel, Boofheads, published in 2008 (Walker), portrays the lives of three teenage boys with insight and humour. Something More, a novel in the Girlfriend series, will be published in April 2009.

Amra Pajalic (VIC)

Amra Pajalic's first novel, The Good Daughter, is the story of a 15-year-old Bosnian girl trying to fit into suburban Australian society. The story was shortlisted in the 2007 Victorian Premier's Literary Awards for the award for an unpublished manuscript by an emerging author, and it will be published in May 2009 by Text.

Mal Peet (UK)

Mal Peet is the author of Keeper, a novel set in a fictionalised Latin America and featuring sports journalist Paul Faustino. Keeper won the Branford Boase Award. Peet's second novel, Tamar, linking the Dutch Resistance movement in WWII to a contemporary story, won the 2005 Carnegie Medal. Two more Paul Faustino novels, The Penalty and Exposure, have been published to wide acclaim.

James Roy (NSW)

James Roy spent most of his childhood in Fiji and Papua New Guinea and decided to start writing after he tired of reading books by dead guys. His first book, Almost Wednesday, was published in 1996. His novel Town (UQP) won the 2008 Golden Inky Award and a NSW Premier's Literary Award. Hunting Elephants (Woolshed Press) is his most recent novel.

Adrian Stirling (VIC)

Adrian Stirling grew up around Geelong and studied literature and journalism at university. He began writing while working as a secondary school teacher in Colac. His powerful debut novel, Broken Glass, was published in 2008 by Penguin Australia.

Chris Wheat (VIC)

Chris Wheat has published five novels for young adults and is a teacher at Sunshine Secondary College. His understanding of teenagers is used to great comic effect in Screw Loose (A&U) and in the earlier Loose Lips. Chris is a frequent reviewer for Viewpoint magazine and is a member of the Melbourne Writers Festival's schools programming committee.