Building Character

Richard Glover’s most recent book is “The Land Before Avocado: Journeys in a lost Australia” It’s been described by Hugh Mackay as “warm, wise and very, very funny”, and by Annabel Crabb as “Hilarious and horrifying, the ultimate intergenerational conversation starter’ . Richard is also author of “Flesh Wounds – a comic romp for anyone whose family was not what they ordered.” He writes regularly for the Sydney Morning Herald and The Washington Post, and presents the comedy show Thank God It’s Friday on ABC local radio.

At the age of 28 Robert Drewe turned from newspapers to fiction writing with his debut novel The Savage Crows. His other novels include The Drowner, A Cry in the Jungle Bar, Grace, Our Sunshine and Fortune, which won the National Book Council’s prize for fiction. His short-story collections are The Bodysurfers, The Rip and The Bay of Contented Men which won a Commonwealth Writers’ Prize.

The Drowner, the first novel to win the Premier's Literary Prize in every State, also won the Australian Book of the Year Prize, the Adelaide Festival Prize for literature and was voted one of the ten best international novels of the decade.
The Shark Net won the Western Australian Premier's Prize for Non-Fiction, The Courier-Mail Book of the Year Prize and the Vision Australia Award. Like The Bodysurfers it was also adapted into an ABC and BBC TV mini-series, while Our Sunshine was made into the international film Ned Kelly, starring Heath Ledger.

His latest novel, Whipbird (published August 2017), is partly inspired by the misadventures of one of his ancestors, a teenage Irish soldier in the British Army’s 40th Regiment of Foot, at the Eureka Stockade.

Jill Eddington joined University of Queensland Press in March this year as CE0. Jill has a long association with the literary sector nationally. She is particularly known for her seven years as Director at Byron Bay Writers Festival and, most recently, as the Director, Literature at the Australia Council for the Arts. 

Kimberley Freeman was born in London but her family moved back to Australia when she was three years old. Kimberley has written for as long as she can remember and she is proud to write in many genres. She is an award-winning writer in children’s, historical and speculative fiction under her birth name Kim Wilkins. She adopted the pen name Kimberley Freeman for her commercial women’s fiction novels to honour her maternal grandmother and to try and capture the spirit of the page-turning novels she has always loved to read. She has an Honours degree, a Masters degree and a PhD from The University of Queensland where she is also a senior lecturer. She lives in Brisbane with her kids and pets and lovely partner. Kimberley’s books include Duet (2007), winner of the Ruby Award, Gold Dust (2008), Wildflower Hill (2010), Lighthouse Bay (2012), Ember Island (2013) and Evergreen Falls (2014). Her bestselling books have been translated into over twelve languages.