Sponsors

 

 

 

 

 

 

These writers have been supported by The Wheeler Centre, Royal Australian Institure of Science, Australian Book Review and the National Year of Reading.

The 2012 Guest Writers, Speakers and Artists at Clunes Booktown Festival

 

John Arnold

John is currently an Associate Professor in the School of Journalism, Australian and Indigenous Studies at Monash University, having previously worked as a  bookseller and a librarian. A long-serving member of the Committee of the Victorian Branch of the Bookcollectors' Society of Australia, he has been collecting books for over thirty-five years. His many publications include a history of the Fanfrolico Press - Satyrs, Fauns and Fine Books - published in the UK by the Private Libraries Association in 2009.

Saturday 12pm  - Wesley Bluestone Church

Saturday 2pm  - Wesley Bluestone Church

Sunday 12pm - Wesley Bluestone Church

Sunday 2pm - Wesley Bluestone Church

 

Geoffrey Blainey

Geoffrey Blainey is a leading historian and commentator.

His book, The Tyranny of Distance, observed the way in which isolation influenced the nation. It coined one of Australia¹s most widely-used phrases. He has written about the Victorian goldfields in the books, The Rush That Never Ended and A History of Victoria and a Shorter History of Australia. He spent part of his childhood in Ballarat. He first saw Clunes at the age of 12, when he rode his bicycle from Ballarat. Today, he drove.

Saturday 12pm  - Wesley Bluestone Church

Sunday 3pm – The Club Hotel

 

Shane Carmody

Shane Carmody is Director, Development at the State Library of Victoria where he has worked for ten years. Prior to this Shane was the Director of the Melbourne Office of the National Archives of Australia. Shane has degrees in History from the University of Melbourne and the University of Toronto, and has published many articles on the collection at the State Library of Victoria.

Saturday 11am, 1pm, 3pm – Wesley Bluestone Church

Sunday 11am, 1pm, 3pm – Wesley Bluestone Church

 

Zoe Dattner

Zoe Dattner is co-founder and Creative Director of Melbourne small press Sleepers Publishing, which has been operating since 2003. She has worked in the area of publishing, both large and small, for more than ten years, and in 2009 Zoe became the General Manager of SPUNC (the Small Press Underground Networking Community), a peak organisation that represents, advocates and promotes more than 70 small publishers around Australia. Zoe sits on the Industry Advisory Board for RMIT’s school of Creative Media. Zoe is a passionate believer in the capabilities of the small press sector to discover, nurture and give a voice to new writers and publishing professionals, and to foster the growth of adventurous readers the world over.

Sunday 11am - The Club Hotel

 

Hazel Edwards

With over 200 books published, including the children's classic There's a Hippopotamus on our Roof Eating Cake which has recently celebrated it's 30th year in print. Hazel has also written the Frequent Flyer Twins series.

Hazel's latest books include f2m:the boy within and Hooray! There's a Hippopotamus on the Roof Having a Birthday Party

Hazel is a 2012 National Year of Reading Ambassador and nominee for 2012 ALMA award. Her books have been translated into Chinese, Korean, French, Indonesian, Polish and Finnish. www.hazeledwards.com.au

Saturday 2pm - Children's Booktown

 

Tim Fisher

Timothy Fischer is the author of several books and was the host of ABC Local Radio’s popular radio series The Great Train Show. He has served in the NSW and Australian Parliaments, as Leader of the National Party, Minister for Trade and Deputy Prime Minister. He has also held senior positions in various charitable organisations, including that of National Chairman of the Royal Flying Doctor Service. It was his interest in transportation that led him to write Trains Unlimited, a book about the history and excitement of rail. He has just completed a term as Australian Ambassador to the Holy See.

Saturday 4.30pm - The Club Hotel

 

 Sue Gillett

Sue Gillett is a senior lecturer specialising in the teaching of creative writing, media and communications at the Bendigo campus of La Trobe University. She has published widely on Australian cinema, particularly the works of Jane Campion, and has a particular interest in contemporary women’s literature. Gillett is a published poet and has been the editor-in-chief for the Melbourne Poets’ Union since 2009.  

Saturday 12.30pm - The Club Hotel

 

Anna Goldsworthy

Anna Goldsworthy is an Australian classical pianist and writer. In October 2009 her memoir Piano Lessons was released in Australia by publisher Black Inc. In November 2010 it was published in the United States by St Martin's Press (Macmillan). She is Artistic Director of the Port Fairy Spring Music Festival, Board Member of the Australian Book Review, Kenneth Moore Memorial Music Scholar at Janet Clarke Hall at the University of Melbourne, and a founding member of the Seraphim Trio. She won Newcomer of the Year at the 2010 Australian Book Industry Awards and her CD Piano Lessons is out now on the ABC Classics label. Anna is a 2012 National Year of Reading Ambassador .

Saturday 12.30pm - The Club Hotel

Sunday 1.30pm - The Club Hotel

 

Peter Goldsworthy

Peter Goldsworthy grew up in various Australian country towns, finishing his schooling in Darwin in the Northern Territory. After graduating in medicine from the University of Adelaide in 1974 he worked for several years in alcohol and drug rehabilitation, but since then has divided his working time between general practice and writing. He has won major literary awards across a range of genres: poetry, short stories, novels, theatre and opera libretti, including the Commonwealth Poetry Prize, the S.A. Premier′s Prize, the Anne Elder Award, the Australian Bicentennial Literary Prize for poetry in 1988. His novels have sold over 400,000 copies in Australia alone, and have been translated into European and Asian languages.

Peter is a 2012 National Year of Reading Ambassador .

Saturday 3pm - The Club Hotel

Sunday 1.30pm - The Club Hotel

 

Sam Harmer

Sam Harmer works commercially as a graphic designer & illustrator. He operates the studio www.harmercreative.com and is a member of Illustrators Australia. He is also a part of the illustration collaborative www.triiike.com

Sam has been illustrating since he was a very young age and has forge a career in this area.

 

Cartooning Workshops

Saturday 12 noon - Children's Booktown

Saturday 3 pm - Children's Booktown

Sunday 2 pm - Children's Booktown

 

Michael Heyward

Michael Heyward is the publisher of Text Publishing. He co-founded in the early eighties the much admired literary magazine Scripsi with the critic Peter Craven. This month Text have released the first all-Australian and New Zealand Text Classics series.

Saturday 3pm - The Club Hotel

 

 

Nicholas Jones

Obsolete text books, tattered pulp fictions and disused dictionaries are a source of creative inspiration for sculptor Nicholas Jones.

In most cultures, books are revered as repositories of stories, factual information and images.

Jones’ use of books as the basis of his art shifts our ‘reading’ of these familiar objects to a sculptural idiom appreciated for its physical shape and allusion.

Nicholas has a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Victorian College of Arts), a Master of Fine Art (RMIT) and a Graduate Diploma of Education (University of Melbourne).

Town Hall stage- throughout festival

 

Nicholas Jose

Nicholas Jose is a novelist, essayist and translator. His most recent novel is Original Face (2005). He is General Editor of the Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature. He taught at Harvard University 2009-11, where he was Chair of Australian Studies. He is Professor of English and Creative Writing at The University of Adelaide and a member of the Writing and Society Research Centre at the University of Western Sydney.

Saturday 3pm - The Club Hotel

Sunday 12.30pm - The Club Hotel

 

Stuart Kells

Stuart Kells is a Bendigo-based author, publisher and bookseller. Under the Bread Street Press imprint he has published, with his wife Fiona, a series of books about books, including Australian Book Collectors and, since 2000, Australian Book Auction Records, which Jonathan Wantrup described as ‘the only reliable guide to Australian rare book values’. His recent publication includes Rare - A life among antiquarian books  of which Geoffrey Blainey in his Foreword, December 2010, writes “The author Stuart Kells is observant and quietly witty. His book is captivating, partly because it discusses other booksellers and their prizes and eccentricities.”

Sunday 12pm - Wesley Bluestone Church

 

Earl Leonard

Earl Leonard has been writing and performing music for most of his life, putting on his first original show when he was in grade five for the younger children of his school. It was becoming a father four years ago that prompted his return to playing for young audiences. He has performed at childcare centres, schools, libraries and for events all over Victoria and in the Northern Territory. Earl's shows are active creativity for the entire audience; it's music for kids.His debut CD of original acoustic songs for children is available at www.earlleonard.com

Sunday 10 am - Children's Booktown

Sunday 1 pm - Children's Booktown

 

Lynne Malcolm

Lynne Malcolm is the Executive Producer of ABC Radio National's Science Unit and contributes to the production of the Science Unit’s programs, which include The Science Show, the Health Report, All in the Mind, Ockham’s Razor, Off Track, and The Body Sphere. She has received a number of awards for her work in radio including the Michael Daley Award for Journalism in Science, finalist status in the Eureka Awards and Bronze and Gold Medals in the New York Radio Festivals International Awards. In 2006 she won the radio award from the NSW Mental Health Services for a two-part series on schizophrenia.

Saturday 1.30pm - The Club Hotel

 

John Nicholson

John Nicholson is an award-winning author with a passion for the built and natural environment and its impact on human society and history. He relishes the detailed research that goes into his books and is renowned for his attractive and accurate illustration of the world around us. Many of John Nicholson's books have been shortlisted in the Children's Book Council Book of the Year Awards.

John Nicholson graduated in architecture from Melbourne University in 1973. He worked as an architect, graphic designer and illustrator before beginning to write and illustrate children's books in 1990.

His works include The State of the Planet (2002) and Songlines and Stone Axes (2007).

John lives in the Victorian bush with his partner Jenny and their daughter Freda in an idiosyncratic, solar-powered house they built themselves. He now writes and illustrates full-time and writes mostly non-fiction, believing that 'information books' can be as exciting and adventurous as fiction. Children turn to them for their intrinsic interest as well as for school assignments.

Sunday 12 noon - Children's Booktown

 

Jenny Niven

Jenny Niven is the Associate Director at The Wheeler Centre for Books, Writing and Ideas in Melbourne. She came to Australia in early 2010 after 6 years in Beijing, where she directed the events program at The Bookworm, China’s foremost English-language literary events venue. She was director and co-founder of The Bookworm International Literary Festival, which runs annually across the three Chinese cities of Beijing, Chengdu and Suzhou. She was books editor at Time Out Beijing from 2006 to 2008. She contributed to Beijing: Portrait of a City, published by Odyssey in March 2008, as well as numerous travel guides.

Sunday 12.30pm - The Club Hotel

 

Justin Oakley

Justin Oakley BA, PhD (Philosophy) is Director of the Monash University Centre for Human Bioethics. He is the author of Morality and the Emotions, and Virtue Ethics and Professional Roles (with Dean Cocking), and is editor of Informed Consent and Clinician Accountability: The ethics of report cards on surgeon performance (with Steve Clarke), and Bioethics. He has published widely and is also co-editor of the quarterly refereed journal Monash Bioethics Review.

Saturday 1.30pm - The Club Hotel

 

Gina Perry

Gina Perry is an Australian psychologist, writer, and broadcaster. Her feature articles, columns, and short fiction have been published in many of Australia’s leading newspapers and literary magazines. Gina's ABC Radio National documentary about the obedience experiments, 'Beyond the Shock Machine', won the Silver World Medal for a history documentary in the 2009 New York Festivals radio awards.

Saturday 1.30pm – The Club Hotel

Sunday 10am - The Club Hotel

 

Alice Pung

Alice Pung is a practising solicitor and a writer, whose most recent book is the memoir Her Father’s Daughter (2011). It tells the story of Alice and her father, a survivor of Cambodia’s killing fields and is set in Melbourne, China and Cambodia. Pung’s first bestselling memoir Unpolished Gem (2006) won the 2007 Newcomer of the Year Award in the Australian Book Industry Awards. Pung is also the editor of Growing up Asian in Australia (2008). Growing Up Asian in Australia and Unpolished Gem are texts on the Victorian and New South Wales, respectively, Senior Secondary English reading lists.

Saturday 12.30pm - The Club Hotel

Sunday 12.30pm - The Club Hotel

 

Andrew Reeves

Andrew Reeves is an historian interested in Victorian mining history with specific focus on the development of the trade union movement and the Australian Labor Party. In his most recent book, Up from the Underworld: Coalminers and Community in Wonthaggi 1909 - 1968 (2011) he unearths the rich mining history of Wonthaggi, located on Victoria's southeast coast. Andrew works in the Office of the Deputy Vice Chancellor, Monash University, as a Professorial Fellow.

Sunday 3pm - The Club Hotel

 

Peter Rose

Peter Rose is well known for his best-selling memoir, Rose Boys, for his poetry (his most recent collection is Rattus Rattus) and for his editorship of the Australian Book Review. His most recent book Roddy Parr is a classic tale of a young man making his way in the world, finding his vocation and finding love.

Saturday 10am - The Club Hotel

Saturday 3pm - The Club Hotel

 

Professor Whatsit or Chris van der Craats

Chris van der Craats began his interest in Punch 25 years ago and is one of the few in Australia who perform the show in the traditional manner. He is also a maker of puppets, the heads of which are carved in wood so they can better withstand the beating they receive during the show. Puppets are available for sale.

www.punchandjudy.com/cvdcpiccinigallery/index.htm

Fraser St. Saturday & Sunday 10.30am, 12.30pm, 2.30pm.

 

Ryan Van Winkle

Ryan Van Winkle is Poet in Residence at Edinburgh City Libraries and has been Reader in Residence at the Scottish Poetry Library. Amongst other things, he hosts a popular poetry podcast available free online. He has been invited to perform at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, the Melbourne Writers Festival, Reel Festivals in Beirut and at Paris' legendary Shakespeare and Company. His work has appeared in the American Poetry Review, AGNI and other magazines you probably have never heard of. His first collection Tomorrow, We Will Live Here was published by Salt in 2010 and was the winner of the Crashaw Prize. He was born in the US and says 'Tomato' that way. Ryan Van Winkle's appearance has been supported by Creative Scotland.

Saturday 11am - The Club Hotel

Saturday 2 pm - The National Hotel

 

Michael Williams

Michael Williams is the Wheeler Centre’s director. Brunswick born and bred, Michael’s bookishness marked him out as early as primary school. He embarked on a career in publishing which eventually took him to New York, where he worked for six months. After an eighteen-month stint on 3RRR’s breakfast programme, he joined the Wheeler Centre. 

Saturday 4.30pm - The Club Hotel

Sunday 1.30pm - The Club Hotel

For additional assistance contact us at booktown@clunes.org