The Nettie Palmer Prize for Non-fiction: Judges 2004

Morag Fraser (Convenor)

Morag Fraser is Adjunct Professor, Faculty of Humanities and Social Science at La Trobe University.  Her publications include Save Our ABC: The Case for Maintaining Australia's National Broadcaster and Seams of Light, Best Antipodean Essays. In 2004 she was awarded an Order of Australia (AM) for her service to journalism - particularly through Eureka Street magazine and the promotion of public debate on a range of social issues - and to the Melbourne Writers’ Festival.

Ian Britain

Ian Britain is the editor of Meanjin, Australia's oldest literary magazine. He has worked as a lecturer at Oxford and Melbourne universities, and a freelance writer and journalist. His publications include Once an Australian: Journeys with Barry Humphries, Clive James, Germaine Greer and Robert Hughes (1997). With Brenda Niall and Pamela Williams, he edited the Oxford Book of Australian Schooldays (1997). Britain was a founding editor of the Melbourne magazine Webber's and was a guest editor of Island. In 2001 became the seventh editor of Meanjin.

Peter Mares

Peter Mares is the author of the award-winning book Borderline: Australia's response to refugees and asylum seekers in the wake of the Tampa (UNSW Press 2002). Peter has been a journalist and broadcaster with the ABC for 17 years and is currently producer of The National Interest on ABC Radio National. Peter is also a senior researcher with the Institute of Social Research at Swinburne University of Technology.

Brenda Niall

Brenda Niall is the author of three award-winning biographies. The most recent, The Boyds, won the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards Nettie Palmer Prize for Non-fiction in 2002. She recently taught in the English Department of Monash University. Brenda now writes full time and is a regular reviewer for The Age and other literary periodicals. In 2004 she was awarded an Order of Australia for her contribution to Australian literature.

Ceridwen Spark

Ceridwen Spark is a researcher at the RMIT Globalism Institute and reviews books for the Sydney Morning Herald, the Canberra Times, The Age and the Australian Book Review.