Featured Author

Tracy M Joyce is an Australian author of speculative fiction. Tracy has long been a fan of the fantasy genre, but particularly likes novels that deal with deep characterisations and that don’t flinch from the gritty realities of life. This and her fascination with the notions of “moral greyness”, that “good people can do bad things” and that we cannot escape our past provide the inspiration for her writing. Combine that with her love of history, horses and archery, and you have Altaica. She grew up on a farm in rural Victoria, in a picturesque dot on the map known...

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Vacen Taylor is an author, writer, storyteller, occasional artist, and amateur photographer. She describes her writing as a basic prose style with the occasional splash of creative penning. She collects comics and loves superheroes, anime, and science. Her Starchild series has been incredibly popular with young readers, but there's lots more in store from this incredibly talented author and screenplay writer. What drew you to base the elemental themes in the Starchild series on the seven chakras?   I have always been interested in energy. But what type of energy, right? I am referring to the energy found in the body....

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Patricia Worth has a Master of Translation Studies from the Australian National University. Her translation of George Sand’s Spiridion was published in 2015, and two bilingual short story books from New Caledonia were published in 2017 and 2018. A number of her translations have appeared in Australian, New Caledonian and US literary journals including Southerly Journal, Transnational Literature, The Brooklyn Rail and Delos Journal. What drew you to translate 19th-century literature? I’ve been reading 19th-century literature since my school days, so my first choice for literature to translate comes from this era. I enjoyed Jean Lorrain’s fantastical tales remembered from...

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Kathryn Gossow is a writer and sometimes gardener living in a two acre garden in a pocket of the Brisbane River. When she is writing, her garden is a mess. When she is gardening, she forgets to write. It seems she cannot have both. She writes for that elusive feeling when she gets into the zone and there is nothing else in the world but her and the words that tumble onto the page. Kathryn has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, won a commendation in the Australian Horror Writers’ Association Flash Fiction Competition and has a number of published...

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Mark Newman has been shortlisted for the Costa Short Story Award, highly commended in the New Writer Prose & Poetry Awards and Bristol Prize longlisted. His work has won competitions judged by Alison Moore, Tania Hershman and David Gaffney. He has been published in Firewords Quarterly, Fiction Desk and Paper Swans. He has eight stories in the Retreat West competition anthology Inside These Tangles, Beauty Lies. My Fence is Electric and Other Stories is a collection of award winning short stories looking at those moments in life that fizz with the electric intensity of change. A housing estate is in shock following a child’s disappearance. A girl and her invisible friend go their separate ways. A father and a...

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Julian Barr first fell in love with all things Greek and Roman in childhood, when he staged his own version of I, Claudius using sock puppets. After his PhD in Classics, he did a brief stint as a schoolteacher, hated being called ‘sir’, and dived into storytelling. Although he remains open to the possibilities of sock puppet theatre, historical fantasy is his passion. He has published scholarly research on Roman medicine and the gastronomic habits of centaurs, but prefers to think of himself as an itinerant bard. What drew you to adapt about Virgil's epic poem for fantasy readers? Haha, Virgil’s epic...

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Born in 1969, Phil likes to point out he was one of the last children born before man walked on the moon. Working at Australia’s National Dinosaur Museum since 2000 and as an educator at the Australian War Memorial since 2006, he has previously worked at Questacon Science centre and could be seen haunting the halls and specimen rooms of London’s Natural History Museum and The Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. Here he even played famed palaeontologist O. C. Marsh during the Smithsonian’s centenary celebrations, and when asked why the 19th century palaeontologist was speaking with an Australian accent,...

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Mawson, the big hearted, soul searching teddy bear, is here to help. One of this bright world’s few writer-bears, he ponders about how to be one’s best especially when feeling a little lost, a little sad. A modest bear of generous proportions, distinctive in his white fur coat and bow tie, he’s always confident deep in his inner-most stuffing, that things are going to be All Right. Today we're chatting with Mawson’s guardian Mark O'Dwyer as part of our month-long featured author promo. What drew you (and Mawson) to create your heartwarming teddy bear books?  I was looking for a gentle little book to...

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Ann Harth writes fiction and non-fiction for children and adults. Strong, interesting female characters creep into most of her books, and many arrive with a sense of humour. Before becoming a writer, mentor and developmental editor in Far North Queensland, Ann studied psychology, waited tables, bar-tended, picked strawberries, worked as a clown and punched keys on various tills. She also spent ten years working with children with special needs. Ann taught writing for the Australian College of Journalism for eight years before taking the leap into freelance work. Ann is the Far North Queensland representative for The Society of Children’s...

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Carolyn Denman is a writer with a passion for introducing young adults to the intriguing world of speculative fiction. Living on a small farm just outside Melbourne – and likely to remain there happily until the human race is permitted back into the Garden of Eden – she holds a Bachelor of Science degree and currently works part time for a finance company. She has completed five novels and numerous short stories and is currently working on a science-fiction romance series. What drew you to write about the Garden of Eden as the focus of your fantasy series? My niece once mentioned...

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