Flash Fiction Fun Weekend

An Opportunity To Turbocharge Your Writing

(April 20,21,22 2018 in Canberra)

Susanne Gervay

Sheryl Gwyther

Pat Simmons

Marion Halligan was born in Newcastle NSW. She grew up by the sea at Merewether and has lived most of her adult life in Canberra, with periods in Paris. She has published more than twenty books: some eleven novels, including Spider Cup, Lovers’ Knots, The Golden Dress, The Fog Garden, The Point, The Apricot Colonel, Murder on the Apricot Coast, Valley of Grace, and Goodbye Sweetheart, collections of short stories including The Hanged Man in the Garden and The Worry Box, and most recently Shooting the Fox; books of autobiography, travel and food, including Eat My Words, and a children’s book, The Midwife’s Daughters. The Taste of Memory: An Autobiography in Food and Gardens, was published in September 2004. She has been short-listed for most of the prizes on offer, and has won some. She has regularly reviewed books, and likes to write essays.  Currently she is writing small memoir pieces. She has received an AM for her services to literature. Valley of Grace, Allen & Unwin, March 2009 won the ACT Book of the Year and was long-listed for the IMPAC Prize. Her most recent novel is Goodbye Sweetheart, published in April 2015.

Jackie French is a wombat tamer in the Araluen Valley New South Wales, Australia. Sometimes she wrestles dinosaurs, but only when creating stories.

Some of her books have won awards or sold millions of copies. Others were eaten by the wombats. She was Australian Children’s laureate 2014-2015 and Senior Australian of the Year 2015. She is dyslexic and still can’t spull. I mean spell.

Carmel Bird received the Patrick White Literary Award in 2016.

Among her many books there are eight collections of short fiction, the latest two being The Dead Aviatrix and My Hearts Are Your Hearts. Carmel’s books on writing are: Dear Writer Revisited; Not Now Jack – I’m Writing a Novel; Writing the Story of Your Life.

Being an author takes you around the world from Oprah, Fox News in Las Vegas, Outback Australia, to the loving kids of the Deaf & Blind School.

My books are driven by the rights of children and families, partnering them in good times and bad and writing for inclusion and respect for each other. I was deeply moved when I received the Lifetime Literature Award for my body of works, by the International Literacy Association.

Craig Cormick is an award-winning Canberra author and science communicator.

He has published over 30 books of fiction, non-fiction and children’s fiction, with both small and mainstream publishers, in Australia and overseas. Much of his work deals with reinterpretations of history.

His writing awards include a Queensland Premier’s Award, ACT Book of the Year Award, the Tasmania Writers Prize and a Victorian Community History Award.

Craig is a former chair of the ACT Writers Centre and has taught creative writing at University and in schools, and is a great believer that good writing comes from good editing drafting rewriting.

Jack Heath is the bestselling author of Hangman, 300 Minutes of Danger and twenty other novels. His books have been translated into several languages, shortlisted for several awards and adapted for television.

Irma Gold is an award-winning author and editor. Her short fiction has been widely published in Australia’s finest literary journals, including Meanjin, Westerly, Island and Review of Australian Fiction. Her short fiction collection, Two Steps Forward, was shortlisted for or won a number of awards. She is also the author of three picture books, with a fourth due out with Walker Books. Irma has worked as an editor for 18 years and is currently Editor at Melbourne-based publisher Inkerman & Blunt and Convener of Editing at the University of Canberra. Visit her at irmagold.com

J.M. Donellan is an author, musician, poet, and teacher. He was almost devoured by a tiger in the jungles of Malaysia, nearly died of a lung collapse in the Nepalese Himalayas and once fended off a pack of rabid dogs with a guitar in the mountains of India. He has performed at Sydney Writers’ Festival, TEDxBrisbane, the Sydney Opera House, Brisbane Festival and some very prestigious basements.

His writing practice spans a range of genres and formats in a manner that is either highly impressive or, in the words of his accountant, ‘irritatingly convoluted and frankly quite annoying.’ His recent works include the poetry collection Stendhal Syndrome, the Kirkus Prize nominated Killing Adonis, the podcast series Six Cold Feet, the forthcoming narrative video game Prisoner Six, and a prolific collection of bathroom graffiti.

Sheryl Gwyther’s mango-gorging, tree-climbing, book-reading, imaginative childhood in Queensland’s tropical north inevitably led to her becoming a children’s author. Sheryl’s published work includes a fossil-digging adventure novel, Secrets of Eromanga, chapter books for younger children and many stories and plays in The School Magazine.

Her awards include two ASA Mentorships, two May Gibbs Children’s Literature Trust Fellowships, and a SCBWI Work-of-Outstanding Progress grant for her new historical adventure, Sweet Adversity. Sheryl’s desire to share her love of short stories for adults led to the highly successful online group, The 52-week Flash Fiction Challenge – now in its fifth year.

Susan lives in Thirroul, near Wollongong. Her collection of flash fiction, Loopholes, was published by Spineless Wonders in 2016. Loopholes was shortlisted for the Small Press Network’s Most Underrated Book Award (MUBA) 2017. Waiting for the Southerly (Ginninderra Press), Susan’s poetry collection, was shortlisted for the Anne Elder Award 2012. Her short story collection, This Person Is Not That Person, will be published by Puncher & Wattmann in early 2019, and right now she is working on something longer. Susan works as a proofreader, and when not at her desk can be found swimming long distances in the ocean.

Harry Laing is a poet, comic performer and children’s author. He has three books to his name and has written and performed 8 solo shows as well as two series of quirky country tales for ABC’s Radio National.

Harry co-runs PoetryAlive weekends and teaches creative workshops in schools where he regularly performs in front of hundreds of school students. His writing workshops are about surprise, increasing the octane level of language, working with rhythm and music and cadence.

He lives on 115 acres near Braidwood, NSW and reckons wombats can teach us a thing or two about writing. Keep digging, for example.

Irene Buckler taught in Australian primary schools for three decades. While teaching, she also wrote many educational programs, stories, plays and poetry for children. Her work has appeared in publications for children and teachers in the United Kingdom and in Australia, as well as online.

Author of Inklings, Irene was a flash fiction finalist in the “Hysteria” (UK) and “Field of Words” Writing Competitions (South Australia.). Her flash fiction stories have also been widely published in anthologies. Irene is drawn by the challenge of writing flash fiction to be the very best writer she can be. A keen observer, Irene writes mainly about people, finding exploring human behaviour to be an endless source of inspiration.

Pat lives at Scarborough on the NSW south coast with a miscellany of pets. She’s a writer of poems, short stories, flash fiction and children’s picture books.

Pat has two picture books entering the world in 2018. ‘Ziggy’s Zoo’ published by Little Pink Dog Books and ‘Little Spiral’ published by Little Steps Publishing. Her adult book, 52 Twisted Tales is a result of her involvement with the 52 Week Flash Fiction Group created by Sheryl Gwyther. She continues to challenge herself by ensuring that her weekly twisted tale is always exactly 100 words.

As a writer, publisher, editor, bookseller (with an early career in teaching), Suzanne has over 20 years of experience in all facets of the publishing industry. She has authored 19 publications to date and has several in the pipeline for 2018.

As a book coach, she has been working with talented Australian writers to teach them how to self-publish and make a passive income from their writing online. She runs writing courses/workshops/literary events and is passionate about nurturing the next generation of talented writers. Her greatest claim to fame is that she can recognise writing talent in others.

Jeff Brownrigg is currently a Research Fellow at the Australian National University and Adjunct Professor at UC. His interests are broad: Australian cultural history and musical legacy. From 1986 to 2005 he was a senior manager and researcher at Australia’s National Film and Sound Archive. A travel book, Encounters on the Hippy Trail, 1971: An Elegy for Mrs P is just out.

He is currently working on Heaven, Earth, and Canberra: Shakespeare, and the Ghosts of Australia’s National Film and Sound Archive, about the disturbed, turbulent 1990s. Other books and journal articles include sectarianism in the late 19th century, WW1 and much about poetry.