Featured Author

Linathi Thabang Makanda is a twenty-two-year-old South African-based writer of poetry and prose. A Communications and Marketing student and self-taught photographer, she strives to portray genuine emotion through her writing and photographic art. An avid reader, Linathi also has a great interest in music and all forms of visual expression. Readers are fascinated to learn the process of writing a poem. Can you tell us about your process and how long a poem takes to compose? My writing process is very fluid. I’ve learnt more each time to let my work take whatever shape it wants to take. The same...

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Josh Donellan is an author, poet, musician, music journalist, teacher, voice actor and event manager. He was almost devoured by a tiger in the jungles of Malaysia, nearly died of a lung collapse in the Nepalese Himalayas and once fended off a pack of rabid dogs with a guitar in the mountains of India. He has an unnatural fondness for scrabble and an irrational dislike of frangipanis. Readers are fascinated to learn the process of writing a poem. Can you tell us about your process and how long a poem takes to compose? However old you are when you finish...

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Judith Michael (J Victoria Michael) is a story-teller with an insatiable curiosity for other dimensions, time travel, and fantastical places. Her loves are music, mostly classical, and dance, from ballet to flamenco. Judith’s short stories have won various awards and have appeared in print and online. As a reader and writer she prefers long works; her GriffinSong Trilogy is scheduled for publication in 2020. Born and raised in New Zealand, her imagination is indelibly drawn in pristine landscapes and dotted with fantasy castles. Judith lives in Melbourne, sharing her home and her somewhat neglected garden with a bossy ginger cat.  What do you love about writing fantasy? Time travel,...

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Rachel Nightingale is an award-winning playwright and novelist with a PhD in Creative Writing. She's come a long way since she wrote her first book, about Pasha the bear, at the age of eight. With a background in theatre, both onstage and off, she wanted to bring the world of the stage to her books. The Tales of Tarya centre on the Commedia dell'Arte of the Italian Renaissance and explore what it might look like if the magic of the theatre was real and if story tellers could bring about change in the real world with their tales. What inspired the...

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Jody A. Forrester was born and raised in Los Angeles during the uneasy Fifties and tumultuous Sixties. Her essays and short stories have appeared in the Sonora Review, Two Hawks Quarterly, WriteRoom, Dreamers Writing, Citroen Review, Gazelle and several others. A story received an honorable mention in the Anderbo/Open City Competition (2009) and another story was featured in the 6th Annual Emerging Voices Group Show (2010) in Los Angeles. A retired chiropractor, Jody received a MFA from Bennington College in 2010. She lives in Venice, California, with her husband, John Schneider, a classical musician. What motivated you to write your memoir? The...

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Melissa has always loved reading. She grew up 700m from the local library and spent most of her time there browsing and borrowing books. Melissa is passionate about literacy and education and believes the ability to read and write gives power to change. “Things work out the best for those who make the best of the way things work out.” This is the motto Melissa has lived by most of her life and has allowed her to live and travel overseas and see some amazing places including Egypt, Italy, Spain, and Africa. She has also travelled closer to home and got...

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When Elizabeth Jane Corbett isn’t writing, she works as a librarian, teaches Welsh at the Melbourne Welsh Church, writes reviews and articles for the Historical Novel Society, and serves as the Social Media Coordinator on the Historical Novels Society of Australasia Conference committee. She also blogs at elizabethjanecorbett.com. In 2009, her short-story, 'Beyond the Blackout Curtain', won the Bristol Short Story Prize. Another, 'Silent Night', was short listed for the Allan Marshall Short Story Award. Her debut novel, The Tides Between, was named on the 2018 Children’s Book Council of Australia Notable Book list. Elizabeth lives with her husband, Andrew,...

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Patricia Leslie is a Sydney author with a passion for combining history, fantasy, and action into stories that nudge at the boundaries of reality. Urban fantasy is the ideal genre for exploring alternative history and Patricia does just this in her debut novel, The Ouroboros Key; a contemporary quest story set in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. Her second novel, A Single Light, leaves known history behind, and joins fantasy with beach and bush south of Sydney where the mild seeming landscape becomes the setting for a potential world-altering event. Walks through the bush will never be the same again!...

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Malve von Hassell is a freelance writer, researcher, and translator. She holds a PhD in anthropology from the New School for Social Research. She edited her grandfather Ulrich von Hassell's memoirs written in prison in 1944, and has taught at Queens College, Baruch College, Pace University, and Suffolk County Community College, while continuing her work as a translator and writer. She lives in Southampton, New York. What drew you to write historical fiction? I have always loved historical fiction for bringing alive the past as much as for showing possibilities for the present. One of my favourite authors in this genre...

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