The SJWF 2010 features over 90 writers from across Australia and overseas. You'll hear novelists, historians, songwriters, playwrights, screenwriters and lifestyle gurus. Here's a small taste of who will be there! Stay tuned for more...
Anna Maguire has more than twenty years experience in the digital publishing industry, spanning book production, website management, digitising and repurposing content. Realising that the delivery of electronic content would revolutionise the publishing world, Anna worked with a publishing team to be one of the first to convert book content for online publishing She has extensive corporate digital experience, managing the web team at NRMA and when 3G was still at concept phase she worked as a Producer at Hutchison Telecoms. Anna also worked at Random House Australia for four years, managing the Production team and the Interactive Division launched in 2006, responsible for the website and strategy for digital content. Since late 2008 Anna has consulted in the digital space and has worked for Australian Interactive Media Association (AIMIA), Australian Publishers Association and The Literature Board of the Australia Council, and Macleay College.
Andrew Markus holds the Pratt Foundation research professorship in the Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation, Monash University, and is Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia. Andrew is the author or co-author of more than ten books, including Australia’s Immigration Revolution (2009). His reports on social cohesion and immigration, Mapping Social Cohesion: The Scanlon Foundation Surveys, were released in 2007 and 2009.
Jonathan Ari Lander is a Sydney based playwright who teaches at UNSW. In 2008 Ari won the Max Afford Award for Revolution. Revolution was presented at the 2009 National Play Festival in Tasmania. Ari was a 2008/2009 resident playwright at the Griffin Theatre Company. His short play Measure was part of the 2009 cycle of short plays at the Griffin and was published in the anthology Short Circuits by Currency Press. His play A Knife Dream will be read by the Griffin Theatre in 2010. Ari’s play Redemption is part of the 2010 season at the Old Fitzroy Theatre. Ezekiel's Song was presented at Theatre@Risk's Festival of New Works and was short-listed for the 2009 Rodney Seaborn Award and was co-winner of the 2009 St Martin’s Young Playwright’s Award. The play will be presented by St Martin’s at the end of 2010.
Diana Ritch considers Oral History to be the family business. In 1957, when she was 14 years old, her mother Hazel de Berg started to interview “notable Australians” for the Australian National Library in Canberra. From then on oral history became part of Diana’s life, and in 1983 she became an interviewer for the National Library. While continuing with them she has also worked on many other projects for individuals and organizations, including conducting interviews for The Survivors of the Shoah Oral History Project. She is currently writing a book about her mother, who pioneered oral history in Australia.
Dr Cathy Kezelman’s first book, Innocence Revisited – a tale in parts, a memoir was published early this year. Its publication, the culmination of a life-time ambition to write also marked a personal milestone of moving beyond the trauma of the past to embrace the future. Cathy is also the chairperson of ASCA (Adults Surviving Child Abuse), a national organisation dedicated to advancing the needs of the more than 2 million Australian adults surviving child abuse. For much of the last decade Cathy has been a driving force working to see the stigma and taboo around the legacy of child abuse eroded and the needs of Australian adult survivors of child abuse acknowledged and addressed. A medical practitioner, Cathy is also a director of the MHCC (Mental Health Coordinating Council NSW) and an advocate for trauma-informed care within the mental health arena. In 2009 she was short-listed for CLW’s Leadership Achievement Award for Women and was an ambassador for National Families Week in 2009/2010.
Geoff Sirmai - ‘Half-watchdog, half-wit’ - has, in recent times, traded in his high profile journalist and consumer advocate ’hat’ for one as full-time performer and arts publicist. He appears in corporate musical satire with Comic Roasts and in stage appearances from Belvoir to the Seymour Centre, the Sydney Opera House, Ensemble and Bondi Pavilion. He is currently starring in the touring production of Every Single Saturday, the musical comedy about soccer parents… yes it’s type-casting! Recent screen credits include Packed to the Rafters, A Model Daughter, All Saints, Headland, Stooged, Gangs of Oz and a swag of annoyingly frequent commercials. Geoff is also a long time member of the Renaissance Players early music group, a leading light of Theatresports and is well known to the community as founding director of the AUJS revues, Kosher Theatresports and star turns in countless revues, spiels and comedy debates. He has enjoyed stints on the executive of many communal organisations including the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies, Maccabi, Theatron, the Sydney Jewish Choral Society, Tikkun Olam, Emanuel Synagogue and The Shalom Institute. He holds a BA (Hons) in Music and English Literature and an MA (Hons) in Australian Drama from Sydney University.
Author Lauren Resnick gives us the insight into the world of traveling solo as a female. Princess With A Backpack is a guide for the everyday ‘princess’ who desires to see the world and experience more than her comfortable home, friends, and society. The book guides its readers on how to get the confidence to get the most out of their travel adventures. A tour guide with attitude, this illustrated book contains practical and a little cheeky information that no woman should leave home without. “Looking good while traveling is something I could have learned the benefits of much earlier in my journey,” says Lauren. “You will be amazed at how differently people treat you when you have a backpack on, however, if you’re wearing decent clothes and have quickly styled your hair you can turn that attitude around… I want to encourage young women to seek out their adventurous spirit and to discover things about themselves as they journey,” says Lauren. “Young women have access to the world in a way we have never seen before… just click on the Internet to see what to expect from different cities – it takes the edge off the unknown from travel. It also creates an opportunity for young women to step out of their comfort zone and act confidently and independently.”
Marcelle Freiman is a Sydney poet. Her latest book is White Lines (Vertical) and her first book of poems Monkey’s Wedding (1995) was highly commended for the Mary Gilmore Prize. Since 1986 she has published poetry in literary magazines in Australia and overseas, and her poems have been read on radio and in performance. The visual arts inspire her writing, particularly her work with the Sydney poetry group DiVerse who write and perform in response to art works in Australian art galleries. She is currently Senior Lecturer in creative writing and literature in the Department of English, Macquarie University and the current president of the Australasian Association of Writing Programs (AAWP). Her scholarly publications include essays on creativity and writing in the journal TEXT, and essays on poetry, literature and migration.
Meiron Lees has spent most of his professional career dedicated to strengthening organisations in the areas of Leadership, Sales and Resilience. In 2002, Meiron emigrated from South Africa and founded InnerCents, an organisation that supports businesses to achieve profitable results and individuals to realise their highest professional aspirations. To date over 4500 executives, managers, business owners and employees have attended his programs worldwide. His clients include IBM, Citibank, IAG, Price Waterhouse Coopers, MLC, Harvey World Travel, MTV, and Westpac. In 2009, Meiron published his award winning book – D-Stress, Building Resilience in Challenging Times – providing practical tools and techniques to manage stress through building resilience.
Ron Goldschlager is Managing Director of Hermal Mortim Group, a diversified investor and manager of businesses and property. He holds an honours degree in Chemical Engineering from Monash University and was Chairman of Leibler Yavneh College from 1990 - 1993. Ron has a passion for helping to ensure a better future for the next generation and beyond. Philanthropy is a high priority, with a focus on sustainability and partnership. These days, Ron’s primary motivation in business is to mentor his great team of very capable young people and enjoy experiencing their growth as fine human beings. Ron and his wife Dina, share the same vision of family and community values, they have four children and ten grandchildren who all love both Australia and Israel.
Roy Williams is one Australia’s emerging public intellectuals. A Sydney University medalist in law, he practised as a solicitor in Sydney for almost twenty years at one of Australia’s leading firms, Allens Arthur Robinson. Illness forced Roy to change careers, and in mid-2006 he became a full-time writer. His book reviews appear regularly in The Weekend Australian and he has contributed numerous other pieces to a range of newspapers, magazines and journals. He was a judge of the 2009 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards. God, Actually, a rational defence of Christianity, is Roy’s first book. It is published in Australasia by ABC Books and in Britain and North America by Monarch Books.
Born in 1924 in Upper-Silesia. Siegmund Siegreich was a member of a Zionist Youth Movement, “Hanoar Hatzioni”; he attended Boarding School until the war broke out. Enslaved in German labour camps enduring, four years of abuse. By the end of 1942, 169 members of his family were exterminated. After liberation he married Hanka, and their daughter Evelyne was born. Active with “Bricha”, smuggling survivors out of Europe into Palestine, he later worked at the Israeli Embassy in Warsaw. Migrating to Israel with his young family, he joined the IDF attending the Officers Academy. Their second daughter Aviva was born. In 1971 the family moved to Australia where Siegmund established a successful business. At the age of 82, he found the courage to write his memoires.
Czech novelist, scriptwriter and humanist Arnošt Lustig's works have been translated into 20 languages, with A Prayer for Katerina Horowitzowa nominated for the US National Book Award in 1974.
A survivor of Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps, Lustig escaped a death march to Dachau in April 1945, then took part in the May uprising against the Nazis in Prague. After World War II he served as a newspaper correspondent in the 1948 Israeli-Arab war. He taught at Washington DC’s American University for two decades and currently teaches creative writing at Prague’s Charles University. He is a recipient of the prestigious Franz Kafka Prize for literature.
The visit of Arnost Lustig is made possible by the Sunraysia Foundation in association with the Jewish Museum of Australia. www.jewishmuseum.com.au
Diane Armstrong is a child Holocaust survivor whose national and international awards include the Pluma de Plata awarded by the Mexican government and the George Munster Award for Independent Journalism. Her first book, Mosaic, which was also published in the US, was short-listed for the National Biography Award and for the Victorian Premier’s Award. The Voyage of Their Life was short-listed for the NSW Premier’s Award, and Winter Journey, which has been translated into Polish and Hebrew, was nominated for the Commonwealth Writers’ Literary Award. Nocturne, her last novel, won the Society of Women Writers’ Biennial Award for Fiction. She is writing her novel Empire Day which will be published by HarperCollins in 2011.
Evelyn Juers was born in Germany, moved to Australia in 1960, and has lived in Hamburg, Sydney, London and Geneva. She has a PhD from University of Essex, UK, on the Brontës and the practice of biography. As an essayist, and an art and literary critic, she has contributed to a wide range of Australian and international publications. With Ivor Indyk she is co-founder and publisher of the literary magazine HEAT and Giramondo books. Her collective biography HOUSE OF EXILE (2008) won the 2009 Prime Minister’s Literary Award for non-fiction. The book tells the story of lives in exile: of the German writer and anti-fascist activist Heinrich Mann and his wife Nelly Kroeger-Mann, and their family and wider circles, including Heinrich’s brother Thomas Mann and sister Carla Mann, Bertolt Brecht, Alfred Döblin, James Joyce, Egon Kisch, Else Lasker-Schüler, Joseph Roth, Kurt Tucholsky, Jakob Wassermann, Virginia Woolf, among others. HOUSE OF EXILE has been described as “scintillating and rather magical and a triumph” (TLS, 22.4.09).
Gad Levy-Golan (Gadi) is a renowned authority in the field of body-mind empowerment through Tai Chi Gong. As the founder of Qi Strategy, a corporate wellness firm, he advocates strategic planning of Qi energy as a method for achieving results, superior productivity, and self-fulfillment. He is also the director and principal instructor of Life in Motion Tai Chi Gong Academy based in Sydney, Australia, offering classes, workshops, retreats, and a Tai Chi Gong Teacher Training Program worldwide that incorporates the most recent outcomes of modern scientific research of Tai Chi and Qi Gong.
Joanne Fedler's books have been published in the UK, Australia, Germany, Czechoslovakia, Croatia and South Africa and have sold over 250 000 copies worldwide. She studied law at Yale and is a former women's rights advocate, counselor of abused women and CEO of a not-for-profit advocacy centre. She is a motivational speaker and writes for Vogue magazine. She lives in Sydney with her husband and two children. Her latest book When Hungry, Eat (Allen & Unwin, 2010) is a spiritual memoir about immigrating, losing weight and the gifts of hunger.
Leslie Stein, a senior research fellow at Macquarie University, is a graduate and postgraduate of the London School of Economics. He is the author of The Hope Fulfilled: The Rise of Modern Israel and co editor (with Sol Encel) of Continuity, Commitment and Survival: Jewish Communities in the Diaspora. Between 2003 and 2006 he served as the editor of the US based Praeger Press’s series on Israeli and Jewish Studies. His recent work The Making of Modern Israel, 1948-1949 (Polity Press Cambridge) has been widely acclaimed. Currently he is writing a sequel entitled Tears of Joy Tears of Sorrow: Israel Since the 1967 Six Day War.
Lyn Tranter, the proprietor of Australian Literary Management, spent her childhood in Australian country towns. After working in England and hitch-hiking through Europe and across Asia, she married the poet John Tranter in 1968, and has been actively involved in the Australian writing community throughout her adult life. She wrote a popular literary gossip column for the Australian under the nom de plume Elizabeth Swanson for many years, and worked for a decade as a literary publicist. In 1986 and again in 1987 she organised and accompanied reading tours by groups of Australian writers through some twenty venues across the USA.
Australian Literary Management was established by Caroline Lurie in 1980. Lyn joined the agency in 1990, and in 1993 became the sole owner. Lyn has travelled widely overseas, building the agency’s reputation and establishing strong links with writers, publishers and other literary agencies.
Born in 1974 in the former Soviet Union in a Russian Jewish family, which in 1989 immigrated to Australia. Maria Tumarkin has published two previous books, Traumascapes (2005) and Courage (2007). She lives in Melbourne with her two children and is currently working as a Research Fellow at the Institute for Social Research, Swinburne on the international "Social Memory and Historical Justice" project. Otherland is her latest book, published in April this year.
Mia Freedman was always in a hurry to kick her big life goals. So when she became editor of Cosmopolitan at 24 and had a baby a few months later, she thought she was right on track. But when things unexpectedly fell apart, she was forced to face a few uncomfortable truths about who she was and what she wanted to do with her life. Over the next decade, she would experience some dazzling career highs and some devastating personal lows. She would leave the glamorous world of magazines for a high-profile new job that exploded in her face. She would lose all her confidence and then - eventually - find it again in an unexpected place. She would make mistakes at work and at home, and she would learn some surprising lessons about what made her happy.
As a writer, magazine editor, popular blogger and media personality, Mia has been called the voice of her generation.
Peter Skrzynecki was born in 1945 in Germany and came to Australia in 1949. He has published seventeen books of poetry and prose, the most recent being his novel BOYS OF SUMMER. He has won several literary prizes including the Grace Leven Poetry Prize and the Henry Lawson Short Story Award. In 1989 he was awarded the Order of Cultural Merit by the Polish government, and in 2002 he received the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) for his contribution to multicultural literature. His memoir THE SPARROW GARDEN was shortlisted for the National Biography Award. His collection of poetry, IMMIGRANT CHRONICLE, has been an HSC study text for many years. He is an adjunct associate professor in the School of Humanities and Languages at the University of Western Sydney.
Robert M Kaplan is a writer, historian and speaker with a long-held ambition to be a humorist that is firmly discouraged by his friends and family. His day job is as a forensic psychiatrist at the Graduate School of Medicine, University of Wollongong. His book Medical Murder: The Disturbing Phenomenon of Doctors Who Kill was published by Allen & Unwin in June 2009. He is a contributing writer to Scope, the Irish medical magazine, writes a column Looking Up from Down Under and has written Op-Ed pieces for the SMH and The Australian on topics including medical genocide and Michael Jackson. He has written on the history of medicine and psychiatry, prehistory and archaeology; crime, serial killing and genocide, Jewish history and the Litvak mentality, and moral panic. Subjects include Sigmund Freud, Dr Radovan Karadzic, Dr Theodor Morell, James Joyce, Abraham Saffron, Harold Shipman, Christian Barnard and Joseph Fritzl. A regular speaker, he has broadcast on the ABC Health Report and Ockham’s Razor programmes. He is currently engaged on a study of the Prophet Ezekiel, a work of fiction entitled Seven Suicides and a book How to be Human: What the brain does and does not do. He has a long-delayed ambition to complete an ambitious autobiography entitled Memoirs of a Marginal Medical Student. The defamation laws will ensure it is highly unlikely to ever appear in print.
Dr Tanveer Ahmed is a psychiatrist and opinion columnist for the Sydney Morning Herald. He writes broadly and has published in most of the major Australian publications. A former SBS television journalist, he sits on the Advertising Standards Board, is a Governor of the Smith Family and is a former national representative for junior doctors within the Australian Medical Association. He has also performed comedy and co-hosted a prime time gameshow. He has previously been chosen by a PM's committee as one of a hundred future leaders of Australia and twice as a "young man of influence" by a popular men's magazine. He was offered membership of the Hakoah club after seeing the wife of one of the senior managers as a patient.
Thomas Keneally was born in 1935 and his first novel was published in 1964. Since then he has written a considerable number of novels and non-fiction works. His novels include The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, Schindler’s List, and The People’s Train. His latest non-fiction book was The Australians: Origins to Eureka. He has won the Miles Franklin Award, the Booker Prize, the Los Angeles Times Prize, the Mondello International Prize and has been made a Literary Lion of the New York Public Library, a Fellow of the American Academy, recipient of the University of California gold medal, and is now a 55 cent Australian stamp.
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