The Writers and Moderators

Michael Abrahams-Sprod

Dr Michael Abrahams-Sprod is an educator at the secondary, tertiary and adult education levels. He occupies an executive position at a Sydney high school and is qualified to teach French, German, Russian and history, has held both educational and professional leadership positions and has conducted research, lectured, presented and taught both in Australia and internationally. His PhD dissertation (2006) entitled Life under Siege: The Jews of Magdeburg under Nazi Rule is currently under preparation for publication in Germany. Dr Abrahams-Sprod is an Honorary Associate in the Department of Hebrew, Biblical and Jewish Studies at The University of Sydney. He also occupies a part-time teaching position in Jewish history and Holocaust studies at The Shalom Institute, UNSW and is the Vice-President (NSW) of the Australian Association of Jewish Studies. His key academic research interests include: German-Jewish history since its inception, German-speaking Jewry under Nazism and the history of Zionism.

Avril Alba

Avril Alba is the Director of Education at the Sydney Jewish Museum. She holds a Bachelor of Arts (Hons)/ Bachelor of Music from Adelaide University and a Masters in Comparative Religion from Harvard University. She teaches for the Melton and MOSAIC programs, and the Depts. of History and Jewish, Biblical and Hebrew Studies at Sydney University. She is currently pursuing a doctorate at Sydney University in History and Jewish Studies.

Goldie Alexander

Goldie Alexander has worked as a freelance writer/teacher for the last two decades. In that time she has written 60 prize-winning books for children of all ages and many short stories, articles, scripts and radio talks. She likes to delve into various forms of writing and is passionate about creating and fine-tuning her own work. She is best known for her historical fiction: My Australian Story: Surviving Sydney Cove, Mavis Road Medley (one of the Victorian State Library best YA fiction) and Body and Soul: Lilbet's Romance, the last two based on her own family. Her latest book for children: include Shape-Shifters, Bridging the Snowy and the Health and Understanding - non-fiction mega-books. Coming is the Story Picture Book Lame Duck Protest and My Horrible Cousins and Other Stories anthology.

Vic Alhadeff

Vic Alhadeff is the current CEO of the New South Wales Jewish Board of Deputies. He grew up in South Africa after his parents managed to escape from the Holocaust, and as a crusading journalist in South Africa, he played a role in uncovering a scandal which brought down the prime minister of the day. After moving to Australia he became editor of the Australian Jewish News. “It wasn't just writing another story, but it was dealing with issues that I care about … giving me a platform to promote and advocate on behalf of human rights issues, whether or not they were intrinsically Jewish.”

Diane Armstrong

Diane Armstrong is a child Holocaust survivor who was born in Poland and migrated with her parents to Australia in 1948. After she graduated from university, she became a freelance journalist, winning national and international awards. In 1998 she published her first book, Mosaic: A Chronicle of Five Generations, which was acclaimed by the late Joseph Heller and Nobel prize-winner Elie Wiesel. Since then, she has written The Voyage of Their Life and her first novel, Winter Journey. Each of her books has been shortlisted for major literary prizes and have all become bestsellers. She lives in Sydney with her husband.

Peter Arnold

Peter Arnold migrated from South Africa immediately on graduation in 1961. Gaining an Arts degree during his 25 years of general practice in Rose Bay, he started editing professionally - medical books for the public, scientific papers for medical journals, books and papers on genocide and Holocaust, and doctoral theses. As chairman of the registration committee of the Medical Board of NSW for 12 years, he was closely involved in the recognition of overseas-trained doctors. His interest in his and his wife's Litvak ancestry resulted in a 5,000-person family tree and a visit to Lithuania in 2007.

Mark Baker

Mark Baker is Director of the Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation at Monash University and Associate Professor of Holocaust and Genocide studies in the School of Historical Studies. He teaches and writes widely on Jewish affairs and is the author of the prize-winning book, The Fiftieth Gate (Harper Collins, 1997).

Danny Ben-Moshe

Associate Professor Danny Ben-Moshe directs the Institute for Community, Ethnicity and Policy Alternatives at Victoria University where he leads a program researching comparative diasporas. He is the co-editor of the book Israel and Diaspora Jewish Identity, and has published internationally on Israel, Jewish identity, Israeli-Diaspora relations and anti-Semitism.
Danny has taught Israeli Studies at Gratz College in Philadelphia and at Melbourne University. He has a PhD on racism from Melbourne University and an undergraduate degree in law and Middle East politics from the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London.

Outside of academia, Danny served as director of the B’nai Brith Anti-Defamation Commission (1996-2000), and the British Israel Public Affairs Center office in Israel (1992-94).

Danny is also a documentary film maker. He made The Buchenwald Ball for SBS (2006) and is currently making a documentary called Shalom Bollywood: the Untold Story of Jews and Bollywood.

Sandra Braude Pilowsky

SANDRA BRAUDE PILOWSKY (pen name: Sandra Lee Braude) is a writer, storyteller and teacher of creative writing. She migrated from South Africa to Australia in 2000. She is a member of PEN, SCWBI, and is an active committee member of the Children's Book Council of Australia. She was responsible for organizing the highly successful 2008 Master Classes for Children, run by the CBCA in collaboration with the Sydney Writers' Festival. She has published poetry, short stories and articles in journals and anthologies, and several books, including: The Windswept Plains; and Pictures of a Strange Town: a story of the Terezin Ghetto. Her novel, Mpho's Search,which deals with the experiences of a black street-kid in South Africa, is prescribed for use in the schools there and is now in its tenth printing.

Bob Carr

Bob Carr, the longest continuously serving Premier in NSW history, was born in 1947 and educated at Matraville High School and the University of New South Wales. Elected as Member for Maroubra in 1983, he retired from politics in 2005. Today he chairs the Advisory Council, Climate Institute, and is a board member with various public-interest organisations. Bob Carr has received the Fulbright Distinguished Fellow Award Scholarship and the World Conservation Union International Parks Merit Award. He has served as Honorary Scholar of the Australian American Leadership Dialogue. He is the author of Thoughtlines (2002), What Australia Means to Me (2003) and My Reading Life (2008).

Bernard Cohen

Bernard Cohen is founding director of The Writing Workshop (www.writingworkshop.com.au), which runs creative writing programs for children and young people in schools, after school, in school holidays and online. Bernard has 20 years experience conducting writing workshops for all ages from kindergarten to postgraduate.

Bernard is also the author of four novels (including Hardly Beach Weather and The Blindman's Hat) and the picture book Paul Needs Specs. His writing has been published around the world and his awards include the 1997 Vogel Prize, 2001 Arts Council of England Writer's Award and a unique three inclusions in the Sydney Morning Herald's Best Young Novelists.

Michael Davis

Michael Davis is a historian, writer, researcher and policy specialist in Indigenous rights in cultural heritage, traditional knowledge and environment. Michael has written and presented many conference papers, including internationally, and has published in various journals. Michael has worked as an independent consultant for a range of organisations, including Aboriginal land councils and community organisations, governments and academic institutions.

Michael is currently working at Jumbunna Indigenous House of Learning, University of Technology, Sydney.

Michael’s recent book Writing Heritage: The Depiction of Indigenous Heritage in European-Australian Writings (Australian Scholarly Publishing, Melbourne, and National Museum of Australia Press, Canberra, 2007) presents a historical survey examining representations of Indigenous heritage in the writings of European-Australian observers, collectors, anthropologists, administrators and others, from the mid-1800s to the present.

Michael’s ongoing writing and research interests are in reflecting on notions of place, dispossession, and loss, and in exploring these as common themes between different cultural traditions. He is contemplating ways of writing about these from a more personal perspective.

Paul Drexler

Paul Drexler was born in 1938 in Spacince, a small village near Trnava, Slovakia. On 8 May 1945 he and his mother were liberated in Theresienstadt. His father never returned. Fifty years later, Paul began searching for his father. A journey that took him from Australia to places he never imagined he would ever see to learn the truth and to uncover the missing pieces surrounding the brutal killing of his father and the impact this has had on his life.

Paul’s book In Search of My Father covers a lifespan of more than 60 years.

Paul completed his education in Sydney becoming a Chartered Accountant. He is a Member of Board of Management of the Sydney Jewish Museum, a volunteer guide and speaker at the Museum and is Past President of Yad L’Yad – hands on community organization.

Paul has been married to Diane for 34 years and are proud parents of their daughters, Julie and Michelle.

Ursula Dubosarsky

Ursula Dubosarsky was born in Sydney, Australia, third child in a family of writers. From the time she was first able to read, at age six, she wanted to be a writer. Among her favourite books as a child were Biquette the White Goat by Francoise, Gone is Gone by Wanda Gag, and Snugglepot and Cuddlepie by May Gibbs. She wrote stories, poems and puppet plays all through primary and high school.

After finishing school, Ursula went to Sydney University to study English and languages, including Old Icelandic and Latin. When she graduated, she moved to Canberra to work in the public service, and in the evenings after work she wrote a time slip adventure called Zizzy Zing.

She then spent a year travelling, meeting her Argentinean husband, Avi, while working on a kibbutz in Israel. They married London, then returned to Australia to live, where their daughter Maisie was born. At this time Ursula wrote her first published book, Maisie and the Pinny Gig illustrated by an old school friend, Roberta Landers. She then wrote a comic children's novel, High Hopes, which she sent as an unsolicited manuscript to Penguin Books in Melbourne. The book was accepted.

Since this time, Ursula has published many more novels as well as a number of books for younger children, and has won several prestigious national literary prizes. She lives in Sydney with her family - Avi, daughter Maisie, and two sons, Dover and Bruno. She recently completed a PhD in English literature at Macquarie University.

Joanne Fedler

Joanne Fedler is a full-time mother and writer, former law lecturer and advocate for women's rights. She is the author of six books, including Secret Mothers' Business (Allen & Unwin, 2006) and Dreamcloth (Jacana, 2005), and the co-founder of Moonstone Media. She grew up in Johannesburg and now lives with her husband and two children in Sydney. Her latest novel Things WIithout a Name was published in June 2008 by Allen & Unwin.

Yvonne Fein

Yvonne Fein is a playwright, novelist, editor, essayist and lecturer whose works have been published locally and internationally. She has edited literary journals and award-winning memoirs.

Her one-act plays were performed by the Melbourne Theatre Company and her full-length drama, On Edge, at the Universal Theatre. Her first novel, April Fool, was published in 2001. Her play, A Celebration of Women, performed to a sell-out audience in 2003 and then at Brisbane's Magdalena Festival.

Yvonne is a student of classical Jewish text in the Masters program at Monash University. This is her second novel.

Richard Freadman

Richard Freadman is Professor of English at La Trobe University, and Tong Tin Sun Chair Professor and Head of the Department of English at Lingnan University, Hong Kong. He has written academic books on the English and American novel, literary theory, philosophical approaches to literature, and autobiography. His memoir, SHADOW OF DOUBT: MY FATHER AND MYSELF (Bystander, 2003), traces his relationship with his father in the context of Anglo-Jewish Melbourne life. His recent book, THIS CRAZY THING A LIFE: AUSTRALIAN JEWISH AUTOBIOGRAPHY (University of Western Australia Press, 2007)was short listed for the NSW Premier's Award in scholarship, is a comprehensive study of autobiographical narratives written by several hundred Australian Jews, who have put their story on record for family and friends.

Richard Freadman is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.

Graeme Friedman

Graeme Friedman is a clinical psychologist and an award-winning fiction writer whose short stories have appeared in anthologies of South African literature published internationally. He is the author of The Piano War, an unbelievable yet true story of love and survival set against the horrors of World War II, and of Madiba’s Boys, a non-fiction book on South African football, politics and history. He has also written academic papers on the subject of torture. Graeme’s work as a clinical psychologist takes him deep into people’s inner lives and traumas, a richly rewarding experience which informs his biographical and fiction writing. Born in Muizenberg, South Africa, he now lives in Sydney with his wife and three children.

Leah Garrett

Leah Garrett is the Loti Smorgon Research Chair of Contemporary Jewish Life and Culture at Monash University. She has published extensively in the field of Jewish literature, including two books on Yiddish literature. Her current work focuses on Jewish appropriations of Richard Wagner's operas. She recently relocated to Melbourne, with her family, from the United States.

Michael Gawenda

Michael Gawenda has been a journalist and editor for more than three decades. He has been a political reporter based in Canberra and a foreign correspondent in Europe and the United States. He has won three Walkley awards for journalism as well as numerous other journalism awards. Michael Gawenda is a former senior editor at Time Magazine and for seven years, was Editor and Editor in Chief of The Age. He stepped down as editor in 2004 to become the Washington Correspondent for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. His book American Notebook: A personal and Political Journey published by Melbourne University Publishing is his account of his time in Washington and of his relationship with the US dating back to his childhood. Gawenda is a columnist for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald and the Director of the Centre for the Advanced Study of Journalism at the University of Melbourne.

Susanne Gervay

Susanne Gervay is a specialist in child growth and development, a teacher and lecturer, and manages marketing and media for The Hughenden, a literary hotel in Sydney. She is on the Board of the NSW Writers Centre, is co-head of SCBWI Australia and New Zealand and leads the Sydney Writers & Illustrators Network at The Hughenden. She was awarded The Lady Cutler Award for Distinguished Services to Children's Literature in 2007. She enjoys being an author, sharing her imagination and thoughts and, hopefully, making life funnier and happier.

Yona Gilead

Yona Gilead is the Malka Einhorn Lecturer and Program Coordinator of Modern Hebrew at the department of Hebrew, Biblical and Jewish Studies, the University of Sydney.

Her research interests include Modern Hebrew language, linguistics and culture; and theories and practices of second/foreign language learning & teaching;

She is currently researching the language-learning behaviours of Modern Hebrew students at the University of Sydney.

Alan Gold

Alan Gold has written fifteen internationally published novels, a few of which are good. He has just finished writing the screenplay from his latest book, The Pirate Queen, which a Hollywood movie studio will be producing, but negotiations are stalled because he wants to play the leading role, and they want Tom Cruise. Why does a middle-aged Australian writer want to star in a movie of his book? Because his co-star is Paris Hilton. However, Alan’s wife is siding with the Hollywood Studio and doesn’t want him to get the part. Stand by for Act 2.

Alan is the Chair of this year’s Festival.

Eva Gold

Eva Gold is Executive Officer of the English Teachers’ Association where she manages, writes and provides professional development for teachers of English in NSW. She was previously employed at the NSW Board of Studies as Senior Curriculum Officer English where her main role was project manager and writer of the Advanced, Standard and Extension Courses for the current HSC as well as various support documents including the text and elective prescriptions. Eva has published several books through St Clair Press and was one of the editors of the Reviewing English, a standard textbook in Universities in undergraduate and graduate training of English teachers.

Howard Goldenberg

The fifth in a family of four children, Howard Goldenberg was born in Melbourne but made - with all Australian parts - in Leeton, New South Wales.

On his father's side, he is descended from the Gaon (Genius) of Vilna, and on his mother's from Cyril Coleman, pearl diver, polo player and one-stringed violinist, of Broome.

In 1974, together with Joseph John Mann, Howard founded the Stomach Club of Australasia, a body which he guided over the next quarter century from strength to weakness to extinction.

In a low-budget cottage industry, labouring in the marital trenches, employing the most modest of equipment, quite without fanfare or government subsidy, Howard participated with his wife Annette in the production of Rachel, Raphael and Naomi. Forbearing to dispose of this litter, the couple have since been rewarded by the advent of five endoted grandchildren.

Howard has run thirty-six full marathons and sixty-one laps around the sun.

He is engaged in fulfilling his life's ambition to become a promising young writer.

His mother is proud of him.

Yoram Gross

One of Australia's leading animation producers and directors, Yoram Gross is acclaimed for films that have won the hearts of children worldwide. A storyteller whose distinctive, non-violent films possess a contemporary charm that crosses all international barriers, Yoram has a rich personal history and uses film and television to share his life experiences.
Born in Krakow, Poland, Yoram endured World War II under the Nazi regime. He studied music at Krakow University. In 1950 Yoram moved to Israel and became an independent film producer and director. In 1968 Yoram and his family migrated to Australia where he headed Australia's most successful animation production house for over three decades. Yoram was awarded the Order of Australia in 1995.

Zeev Harvey

Professor Warren Zeev Harvey is Chair of the Department of Jewish Thought at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he has taught since 1977. Born in New York, he studied philosophy at Columbia University (PhD, 1973). He has taught also at other universities, e.g., McGill University, Yale University, and Yeshiva University. He is the author of more than one hundred studies on medieval and modern Jewish philosophy, including Physics and Metaphysics in Hasdai Crescas (1998). He has written extensively on Judah Halevi, Maimonides, Gersonides, Crescas, Spinoza, and Levinas. He is currently a scholar-in-residence at The Shalom Institute, Sydney, lecturing there on Great Jewish Thinkers – Great Jewish Thinking and Love and Sex in Jewish Philosophy and Kabbalah.

Olga Horak

Olga Horak, born 1926, was transported to Auschwitz in 1944 and, in 1945, to Bergen-Belsen. She is her family's sole survivor. Her sister, Judith (1925 - 1942), who died in Auschwitz, was one of the first Jews transported from Bratislava. She and her husband, John Horak, emigrated to Australia in 1949 and established the Hibodress garment factory. In 2000 she wrote her memoir Auschwitz to Australia.;

Shifra Horn

Shifra Horn lives in Jerusalem and has a BA in Biblical Studies, Archeology and Communication. She is a journalist, lecturer and has worked as a spokesperson for the Ministry of Absorption. She has received many prizes both in Israel and other countries.Among them the Book Publishers Association Golden and Platinum Prizes for all her books, the WIZO -Israel prize and the Prime Minister's Prize for Literature 2004.

In 2006 she was awarded the Brenner Prize in Israel - one of the most prestigious prizes in Israeli literature- for 'Ode to Joy' as well as an important Italian prize (ADEI )for Jewish writers for the same title.

Among the University invitations accepted Horn has lectured at University College London , Cambridge University England and Princeton USA. and participated in writers' festivals around the world including Holland, Australia ,USA and New Zealand and has been a featured guest at the Paris and Turin International Book Fairs.

Her books have been translated into English, French, Dutch, German, Italian, Greek, Estonian, Mandarin and Turkish.

Novels: Four Mothers: The Fairest Among Women. Tamara Walks On Water. Ode to Joy.

Non Fiction: Shalom Japan. Cats. A Love Story

Childrens Books: The Purrfect Pet

Rina Huber

Rina Huber was born in Israel. She was 7 when her mother died in 1936. She was then sent to Italy to live with distant relatives. In 1939 she came to Australia with these relatives.

She met her future husband, Felix, on the school bus when she was 15 and he was 17. They married five years later, whilst Felix was still a medical student. They had two children.

At the age of 30 Rina started university and majored in Anthropology. She was a tutor at Sydney University in the Department of Anthropology. Then a lecturer in Anthropology and Sociology at U.T.S. until her retirement.

Her research focused primarily on immigrants and on the concept of honour and shame in mediterranean societies.

Mireille Juchau

Mireille Juchau is the author of Burning In (Giramondo) which was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers Prize and the Nita B. Kibble Award 2008. Her first novel, Machines for Feeling (UQP) was shortlisted for the 1999 Vogel/Australian Literary Award. In 2002 her play, White Gifts won the Perishable Theatre International Women's Playwriting Competition and was performed and published in the US. Known also for her arts essays and reviews, Juchau has received grants from the Ian Potter Foundation, Arts NSW and the Australia Council and a Marten Bequest Travelling Scholarship.

Leah Kaminsky

Leah Kaminsky is a doctor and a writer. She was awarded the Eleanor Dark Flagship Fellowship for Fiction in 2007, and a grant from Arts Victoria in 2008 for her novel The Waiting Room. She came second in the John Shaw Neilson Poetry Prize 2007 and is the recipient of a Fellowship at the Shaindy Rudoff School of Creative Writing, Bar Ilan University, which she will take up in November 2008. She has published feature articles, short fiction and poetry in many newspapers and literary journals including Quadrant, Voices, Poetry Australia, The Age and Mattoid. She is the author of a poetry chapbook Spilt Milk (RMIT poets ed Judith Rodriguez & Antoni Jach), The ABC Guide to Poisons (Houghton Mifflin) and Your Child's Health with Professor Frank Oberklaid, (4th edition Hardie Grant). She writes a regular column for The Australian Jewish News.

Tom Keneally

Thomas Keneally won the Booker Prize in 1982 with Schindler’s Ark, later made into the Academy Award-winning film Schindler’s List by Steven Spielberg. Tom has written nine works of non-fiction, including The Commonwealth of Thieves, The Great Shame and American Scoundrel, and 27 works of fiction, including The Widow and Her Hero, An Angel in Australia and Bettany's Book. His novels The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith, Gossip from the Forest, and Confederates were all shortlisted for the Booker Prize, while Bring Larks and Heroes and Three Cheers for the Paraclete won the Miles Franklin Award. Tom Keneally’s most recent title is Searching for Schindler, which was published in October 2007.

Rachael Kohn

Rachael Kohn is the author of The New Believers, Re-imagining God (2003) and Curious Obsessions in the History of Science and Spirituality (2007).
Rachael is the producer and presenter of ABC Radio National’s The Spirit of Things and The Ark on ABC Radio National and online at www.abc.net.au/rn.
Her recent series on Israeli archaeology recorded around Israel was broadcast in June on The Ark and simultaneously interviews with key figures in Israel were heard on The Spirit of Things.
She holds several degrees, including a Ph.D. from McMaster University, and was awarded the degree of Doctor of Letters honoris causa by Chancellor Dr John YU, AC, University of New South Wales, on 29 April 2005.

David Kowalski

David Kowalski is an obstetrician and gynaecologist practising in Western Sydney. He has been published in professional medical journals but The Company of the Dead is his first novel. It took seven years to write and is published by Pan Macmillan.

Konrad Kwiet

Konrad Kwiet is a leading academic in the field of Shoah studies. He is Adjunct Professor in Jewish Studies and Roth Lecturer in Holocaust Studies at the Department of Hebrew, Biblical and Jewish Studies at the University of Sydney. Formerly Chief
Historian, Australian War Crimes Commission, he is the Sydney Jewish Museum’s resident historian.

Ilona Lee

Ilona Lee has been involved with The Shalom Institute for over 10 years and she has been President for eight years. She is also on the Executive of the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies, chairing the Social Justice Committee.

Her qualifications are in education and she worked in the tertiary education sector for 10 years, then in the health sector for 13 years, specifically in the area of multicultural Australia. Earlier this year she was made a Member of the Order of Australia for service to the community particularly in the field of multicultural health care, and to the Jewish community through a range of educational and welfare organisations

John Levi

Rabbi John Levi AM was born in Melbourne in 1934. A perennial student he now has a PhD from Monash. And honorary Doctor of Laws from the same institution. He is a Doctor of Divinity (Hebrew Union College , Jerusalem). BA and Dip Ed (Melbourne University), Master of Arts (Monash). He is an Adjunct Professor at the Australian Catholic University. He is a life member of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry. He served as Rabbi of Temple Beth Israel in Melbourne for 37 years and then 3 years as Regional Director of the Union for Progressive Judaism in this region. His proudest achievement is the King David School in Melbourne. He is the co author of Australian Genesis, author of These Are the Names, the biography of Rabbi Jacob Danglow. an Australian Haggadah, the Music of the Berlin Reform Synagogue.

Serge Liberman

Born in Russia in 1942 and arriving in Melbourne in 1951, where he is a medical practitioner, Serge Liberman is the author of six collections of stories and compiler of A Bibliography of Australian Judaica (with the third updated and annotated third edition currently in progress). He is also a former literary editor of the Melbourne Chronicle and the Australian Jewish News, one-time member of the editorial committees of the Australian Jewish Historical Society Journal (Vic), Gesher: the Official Journal of the Council of Christians and Jews and Outrider: A Journal of Multicultural Literature in Australia. He has three times won the Alan Marshall Award for his collections, which are titled On Firmer Shores, A Universe of Clowns, The Life That I Have Led, The Battered and the Redeemed, Voices from the Corner and his latest, Where I Stand.

Menachem Mautner

Menachem Mautner is the Daniel Rubinstein Chair Professor of Comparative Civil Law and Jurisprudence at the Tel Aviv University. He has been a visiting professor at Michigan Law School, NYU Law School, Cardiff Law School and Harvard Law School. He is the author of The Decline of Formalism and the Rise of Values in Israeli Law and On Legal Education. He has edited several books and published many dozens of articles and chapters in books, in Israel and in the United States, in the areas of contract law, law and culture, and multiculturalism.

Daniel Mendelsohn

Daniel Mendelsohn, a New York-based writer and critic, is the author of the international bestseller "The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million," about his search for information about the fates of relatives who perished in the Holocaust. A scholar by training, he moved to New York City in 1994 after completing his Ph. D. in Classics, and since then his reviews and essays about books, films, and theater have appeared frequently in numerous national publications, including The New Yorker, The New York Times, and The New York Review of Books. His first book, The Elusive Embrace, published in 1999, was named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and a Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year; his second book was a scholarly study of Greek tragedy, "Gender and the City in Euripides' Political Plays," published by Oxford University Press in 2002. Currently the Charles Ranlett Flint Professor of Humanities at Bard College, Daniel Mendelsohn is the recipient of numerous honors for his criticism and, most recently, for "The Lost," which won the National Book Critics Circle Award, the National Jewish Book Award, the Salon Book Award, a Barnes and Noble "Discover" Award, and the Prix Medicis in France. In April, 2008 he was a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin; in January, 2009 he will be Critic in Residence at the American Academy in Rome.

Eileen Naseby

Eileen Naseby was born in Haifa in 1943. At the age of 10 she emigrated to Australia with her mother and stepfather. Married to the painter David Naseby in the mid-60s, Eileen raised four children before establishing Australia's leading stock footage film library Film World. With Film World and Murdoch Books Eileen produced the Australian Memories series of photographic books, showcasing images from the Cinesound Movietone Archive. In 2006 Murdoch Books published Ursula – A Voyage of Love and Danger Eileen’s biography of her mother Ursula Hall. Eileen has received several fellowships to Varuna - The Writers' House in the Blue Mountains of NSW, and is now at work on a novel.

Paul O'Shea

Dr Paul O'Shea is a Sydney educator and historian with many years of experience in inter-faith dialogue. He is the Senior Religious Education Coordinator at St Patrick's College Strathfield where he teaches, among other topics, Christianity and Judaism. He has taught in Jewish adult education for over ten years, having the chutzpah to teach Shoah, Jewish history and antisemitism to and with Jews.

Paul's particular area of research has been Pope Pius XII and Catholic responses to the Holocaust. 2008 is the 50^th anniversary of the death of this most enigmatic of Popes; a man who remains more controversial in death than he ever was in life. O'Shea is a member of the Council of Christians and Jews and a founding director of the Australian Institute of Holocaust and Genocide Studies. Paul's book A Cross Too Heavy is his first published work.

Ruth Ostrow

Ruth Ostrow is one of Australia’s leading Body–Mind–Soul writers. Best known for her work as a profiler of business leaders during the turbulent 1980s, she recently rejoined the Australian’s Business section with a new column, ‘Business Life’, exploring the psychological and spiritual aspects of worklife. She has a host of books to her credit in the areas of finance, relationships and wellbeing. She now also works as an international keynote speaker.

Fania Oz-Salzberger

Professor Fania Oz-Salzberger is the Leon Liberman Chair in Modern Israel Studies at Monash University in Melbourne. She is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Haifa, and Founding Director of the Posen Research Forum for Jewish European and Israeli Political Thought.

Fania Oz-Salzberger is author of Israelis in Berlin (Keter 2001, German translation at Suhrkamp Verlag 2001), that was on Israel's national bestsellers list for 21 weeks. Her academic murder plot, The Scratch, won first prize in the Ha'aretz Short Story Competition for 1999.

Born in 1960 in Kibbutz Hulda, she studied at Tel Aviv University and completed her doctoral thesis on the Scottish and German Enlightenments (1991) at the University of Oxford, where her most significant mentor was Sir Isaiah Berlin.

She has been Editor-in-Chief of the Haifa University Press, and is Board Member of the University’s Jewish-Arab Center.

Peta Jones Pellach

Peta Jones Pellach, Director of Adult Education at The Shalom Institute; regular guest lecturer at the University of Sydney; Jewish representative on numerous interfaith delegations; education consultant to the ECAJ. Peta obtained her BA from UNSW, MA in International Affairs from Columbia University, New York, and was a Jerusalem Fellow (1989 – 1991). Peta is the author of two chapters in 'New Under the Sun' (Black Inc 2006), ‘Adult Education’ (with Paul Forgasz) and ‘Interfaith Dialogue’. A prayer she composed is included in 'Mosaic: Favourite Prayers and Reflections from Inspiring Australians (Rosalind Bradley ed) (ABC 2008) and later this year her commentary on Parshat Masei will be included in a book to mark Israel's 60th anniversary.

Marjorie Pizer

Marjorie Pizer was born in Melbourne, educated at Melbourne Girls Grammar and Melbourne University. She says she went to university to learn to be a writer but found the English course dissappointing. Her professor thought nothing good had been written since 1900 and that young women shouldn’t read D.H.Lawrence. In her early days, together with her husband and poet Muir Holborn, she researched and edited an anthology of Australian poets. They then started up the Pinchgut Press to publish their work. Her husband died suddenly and Marjorie was forced to work to support her family. She teamed up with novelist Anne Spencer Parry to establish a counseling and psychotherapy practice based on the humanistic tradition of Maslow and Rogers, two prominent American psychologists. After a gap of twenty years she began to write again and her first book of poems “Thou and I” was published in 1967. The poetry and psychotherapy are now closely allied. Clients come to her for many reasons: broken relationships, depression, anxiety, bereavement as well as personal growth. Her constant contact with people’s emotions enriches her deep response to human nature. She also writes about insects, beaches, animals, aborigines, graveyards in France, just about everything! Her poetry is so simple and direct it can be mistaken for Chinese work and indeed that is one of her strong influences. After Marjories last book “A Fortunate Star” she said she’d “never write another – but then – who knows”!

Vera Ranki

Multiple award winning author and academic, Dr Vera Ranki is Founding Director of the Examined Life Institute. She won the Jean Martin Award 1997, awarded biannually to the best PhD thesis. Her earlier book, The Politics of Inclusion and Exclusion (Allen&Unwin, Sydney; Holmes&Meier, New York) won Outstanding Academic Book of the Year 2000 award in the United States. Vera provides courses, individual lectures, talks and workshops to capacity audiences at venues such as the State Library of NSW, Sydney University Continuing Education, the Shalom Institute, and the National Art School. Currently she is writing a book on Living the Examined Life.

Andrew Riemer

Andrew Riemer is a bestselling author and the Chief Book Reviewer of The Sydney Morning Herald. He is the winner of several literary awards including the Geraldine Pascall Award for Critical Writing in 1999. His books include Inside Outside, Sandstone Gothic, Hughes, and most recently, A Family History of Smoking, published by MUP in May.

Suzanne Rutland

Suzanne D. Rutland is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Hebrew, Biblical & Jewish Studies, University of Sydney. Her major history of Australian Jewry, Edge of the Diaspora: Two Centuries of Jewish Settlement in Australia, was first published in 1988. Her most recent publication, ‘If you will it, it is no dream’: the Moriah Story, is a history of today’s largest Jewish day school in Australia. She has held numerous leadership positions, including being immediate past president of the Australian Jewish Historical Society.

Ela & Natasha Simon

Ela was born in Krakow, Poland in 1953 to Holocaust survivors. Her family moved to Israel in 1957 and then to Australia in 1968.

She completed a Bachelor of Science degree at UNSW.

She met her partner, Peter, 30 years ago. They worked together in the computer industry, designing and writing computer systems. They have two beautiful daughters, Michelle and Natasha.

For 23 years the family battled the ravages of Natasha’s Bipolar Disorder. Natasha and Ela wrote a book together The Bi-Polar Express after her first major breakdown.

Natasha is now 24 years old. She has done many years of drama at Helen O'Grady, NIDA and ATYP after dropping out of school at 16. She has completed a Film Director's course, a Chef's course and Psychology UPC. She has worked in bars, cinemas and childcare and loves children, movies and writing. She is currently working on the sequel to her first book to be called Rocky Road.

She speaks together with her mother at Mental Health functions & seminars. They also cook together for their small catering business.

They hope to raise awareness and acceptance of mental illness.

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Moya Simons

Moya Simons was born in Moree, NSW but has spent most of her life in Bondi.
She has a vivid imagination and when she was a child noticed one day that the neighbours were busy digging at the bottom of their garden. Policemen from Bondi Police Station paid a visit to her neighbours' home after Moya seriously told them they were burying bodies in the garden. (They were planting petunias).

Moya began to write for children after being encouraged by her own kids. She'd always loved science fiction. In fact one of her aims had been to be an astronaut. After NASA rejected her application it seemed to make sense to write about aliens, so her first book published was called lggy frorn Outer Space in 1993. After that there was no holding Moya back. She wrote about aliens, naughty children and plants that talked. In fact her next book out in 2005 is called My Amazing Poo Plant, based on a true story, Hmm.

Moya's children, Suzy and Tamie are now grown up. They think it's great to have a mum who believes she's about twelve years old and just may have an alien ancestor. Moya is married to Jules, who has a furry beard and is currently painting a picture of Moya for a big art show. He wants to make his painting different, so in the painting he has her curly hair filled with children reading her books. She says this is heaps better than dandruff.

Moya has lots of pot plants. No she doesn't talk to all of them. Why talk when you can sing? On a windy day, you can almost see them dancing - the pot plants, not Moya. Though if she listens long enough to rock n roll, she just might break into some very weird contortions.

Alex Skovron

Alex Skovron was born in Poland, lived briefly in Israel, and came to Australia during his tenth year. He is the author of four poetry collections, most recently The Man and the Map (2003), and a prose novella, The Poet (2005). Awards for his poetry include the Wesley Michel Wright Prize (twice), the John Shaw Neilson Award (twice), the Manuel Gelman Memorial Prize for Literature, the Australian Book Review Poetry Prize, and, for his first book, the Anne Elder and Mary Gilmore awards. His novella was joint winner (with Kate Grenville) of the FAW Christina Stead Award for fiction. A collection of prose-poems, Autographs, is due this year, and a volume of short stories is in preparation. Alex lives in Melbourne and works as a freelance editor.

Leslie Stein

Leslie Stein had been an associate professor of economics at Macquarie University. Since retiring in 1997, he has devoted himself to research and writing on the history of Israel. His first book: The Hope Fulfilled: The Rise of Modern Israel, was published by Praeger Press (USA). At his publisher's request, he took on the role of the firm's series editor on Israel and Jewish Studies. One of the books within the series jointly edited with Sol Encel was: Continuity, Commitment and Survival, Jewish Communities in the Jewish Diaspora. He has now completed The Making of Modern Israel: 1948-1967, which will be published by Polity Press, Cambridge, UK in 2009.

Immanuel Suttner

Immanuel Suttner has published short stories, poetry, translations of Hebrew poetry, and non-fiction. In 2007 he completed a series of 9 non-fiction book for children, and a collection of poetry “Hidden and Revealed”, which has received good critical reviews. Suttner grew up in South Africa, studied in a Jerusalem yeshiva, served in the IDF, and then completed a degree at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 1991 he returned to South Africa, where he worked in television as a scriptwriter, and also occasional directed and produced. Suttner emigrated to Sydney in January 2008, and currently works at Emanuel School.

Esther Takac

Esther Takac is a psychologist and children’s author. After completing her Masters in Child Psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, she specialized in child and family assessment and therapy, working in public and private practice. She has been involved in clinical research and has published articles in her field.

Esther is the author of Genesis – the Book with Seventy Faces (Pitspopany Press 2008), and Loni and the Moon (Lothian 2003), placed on the Victorian Premier’s Reading List. She lives in Melbourne with her husband, three sons and a three legged dog.

Maria Tumarkin

Born in 1974 in the former Soviet Union in a Russian Jewish family, which in 1989 immigrated to Australia. In 1992, only two years after arriving in Australia, bluffed my way into a Melbourne Journalism course. I was 17, could barely speak English and did not even finish Year 11. In thirteen years since, have traveled through Australia and the world, living in backwaters and big smokes. For six months, was the only person on my street in North Queensland to go to work in the mornings. For years, was the only first-generation migrant to tutor in Australian history at the University of Melbourne. Have directed video-clips and commercials, raised a daughter, completed an inter-disciplinary Ph.D. and been published in popular and scholarly journals. More to come.

Sabina Van Der Linden Wolanski

Sabina van der Linden Wolanski Sabina Wolanski was 12 when her home town in Poland was invaded by Nazis. In 2005, when Germany was preparing to open the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, in Berlin, they searched the world for a Holocaust survivor who could speak for the six million dead. In Steven Spielberg’s Shoah archives, they found the survivor they were looking for: Sabina. She told the audience in Berlin that if the Holocaust had taught her anything, it was that hatred and discrimination are doomed to fail. Her memoir, Destined to Live, was published in 2008.

Agnes Walder

Agnes Walder was born in Budapest Hungary in 1943. She was 20 months old in 1945, when her father, the playwright and poet Dr Lajos Walder, was killed in the Holocaust.

Agnes was thirteen years old when one cold and frightening night, during the Hungarian
Uprising of 1956, she walked with her family across the border into Austria. They arrived in Sydney in 1957.

Between 1964 and 1968 she lived in Connecticut, USA, where her husband was completing his post-graduate studies. Her two sons were born after their return to Australia.
Many years have been devoted to the translation into English of her father’s plays and poems. Her translations of his selected poems were published by Macmillan in 2004 under the title We, the Twenty-five Letters of the Alphabet. In the same year her own poems appeared as My Life Among Westerners (Macmillan, 2004). Her English translations of Lajos Walder’s three plays entitled Vase of Pompeii, Tyrtaeus and Below Zero were published by Macmillan under the title The Dramas of Lajos Walder in 2007.

Marcel Weyland

When WW2 came, Marcel Weyland escaped from Łódż, Poland. Eventually the family reached Soviet-occupied Vilnius, then, helped by Japanese consul Sugihara, reached Shanghai through Japan and was interned there after Pearl Harbour. After liberation by the Americans Marcel qualified in architecture, and later law, in Sydney. His love of poetry led to translating the Polish epic Pan Tadeusz into English verse. This was published in Australia, the U.K. and New York. For this he received the Order of Merit from the Polish Government, and the OAM this year, and lectured here and in continental and English universities. Echoes – Poems of the Holocaust followed in 2007. 200 Years of Polish Poetry is in the process of publication by Brandl & Schlesinger. Marcel has also translated What I Read to the Dead by Władysław Szlengel, the poet of the Warsaw Ghetto.

Scott Whitmont

After gaining a Master’s in International Affairs from Columbia University, Scott spent 10 years overseas, working in the field of business development and conference planning in New York, Dallas & Hong Kong before returning to Australia in 1994, switching careers to become a bookseller.

He now owns and operates Lindfield Bookshop and Lindfield Children’s Bookshop, providing quality books to Sydney’s North Shore and beyond, holding regular ‘meet the author’ programmes, literary lunches and school author events. Passionate about books, Scott is President of the Australian Booksellers’ Association (NSW); a member of the ABA.’s Federal Executive Committee and a key player in the Sydney Independent Booksellers’ Group.

Scott is a founding member of the SJWF’s organising committee and is happy to serve as the Festival’s official bookseller.

Ruth Wilson

Ruth Wilson is a retired teacher of English Language and Literature. She holds an Honours Master’s Degree from Tel Aviv University and wrote her thesis on the mature novels of Charles Dickens. She initiated the Project Heritage Living Historians Program in 1985; since then, several thousand students have explored and recorded the life experiences of senior members of the Jewish community. She has edited an anthology of Holocaust Survivor stories written by Year 10 students and has produced several teaching manuals for the implementation of oral history in the classroom. In 2000 her book, A Big Ask: Interviews with Interviewers, was published by New Holland.

Bruce Wolpe

Bruce Wolpe served for many years as Legislative Director to Rep. Henry Waxman of California, and was a partner in a Washington government relations firm. He has been involved in several US political campaigns for Democratic candidates. He is director, corporate affairs, for Fairfax Media, publisher of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.

Arnold Zable

Arnold Zable is an award-winning writer, storyteller, educator and human rights advocate. Formerly a lecturer in the Arts Faculty, Melbourne University, he has conducted numerous writing workshops and has been a visiting lecturer in creative writing. His Jewels and Ashes, which won five Australian literary awards, depicts his journey to Poland to trace his ancestry. He is the author of numerous feature articles, columns, short stories, reviews and essays. He was a co-writer of the play Kan Yama Kan, in which asylum seekers tell their stories. A compelling storyteller, Zable speaks and writes with passion about memory and history, displacement and community.

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