Author Directory
Margaret River Press operates both in Margaret River and at the Centre for Stories in Perth, Western Australia. Its small team of staff, editorial members and ever growing interns, love the feeling that comes from publishing not in pursuit of profit, but in a sense of curiosity about people, places, and the stories they hold.
Margaret River Press is a press that's strongly committed to nurturing and supporting writers at all stages of their career.
Authors
As a photojournalist, Sue-Lyn’s work has taken her to Hong Kong, Cambodia and throughout Europe. She photographed and co-authored Chefs of the Margaret River Region, which showcases the beauty of the region through exquisite photographs. In Surfing Down South she conveys a characterful account of...
Danielle Costley is an author, journalist and avid foodie. She has worked with many well-known chefs, who have inspired her to learn more about sourcing and buying locally-grown seasonal food. Her passion for exceptional regional food that speaks of its origins has driven her to write a book celebrating not only her ‘food finds’ but the wonderful growers...
Peter Forrestal has been a wine writer for about 30 years: The Way it Was has been his 34th book, three of which have been about the wine region of Margaret River (and the second with Ray Jordan). He has been a journalist and writer about wine, locally, nationally and internationally. Peter was founding editor of Gourmet Traveller Wine...
H.C. Gildfind lives in Melbourne and has published short stories, poetry, essays and book reviews in Australia and overseas. Gildfind has also researched interwar Australian literature and history, has been mentored by novelist Andrea Goldsmith, and is currently working on a novel.
Jacqueline Hagan was temporarily distracted from the pursuit of herring while she pursued a career as a psychologist and management consultant. Along the way, she married a geologist who also happened to love fishing and, together, they set off to discover the world.
Charles Hall was born and raised in Perth and educated in the sixties at Mt Lawley High and in the eighties at UWA and later at Melbourne. He has had a wide experience of day jobs, including truckie’s offsider, arc welder, builder’s labourer, recording studio engineer, shoveller...
Paul Iskov is one of Australia’s leading native food chefs. He has experience working in the world’s best restaurants from Coi in San Francisco to DOM in Rio de Janeiro to Noma in Copenhagen. Upon returning to Australia, Paul established his roving dining restaurant, Fervor...
Portland Jones is both a writer and a horse trainer. She has a PhD in literature and runs her own horse-training business. Her novel, Seeing the Elephant was published by Margaret River Press in. 2016. She lives in Perth’s Swan Valley with her partner and three children.
Ray Jordan is one of Australia’s most experienced wine journalists and has been writing about wine for almost 40 years. He is currently Wine Editor of The West Australian and contributes two weekly columns to the paper. He has been awarded the Jack Mann Medal...
Julie Kinney is an avid gardener. Growing up in Western Australia she has a great love of the countryside and especially the gardens created. From selecting beautiful gardens to open has grown a business of garden tours taking Julie across the world although she just loves being able to show people her own country.
Lynne Leonhardt was born in Donnybrook in the South West of Western Australia. As a young adult, she worked overseas, travelling extensively during an extended six-year period. She later spent four years in the Riverina District of New South Wales. The author studied music and English literature at University...
Isabelle Li is a Chinese Australian writer and translator. She has published in various anthologies and literary journals, including The Best Australian Stories, Southerly, and World Literature in China. Her collection of short stories, A Chinese Affair, was published by Margaret River Press in 2016. Her script...
Emily Paull is a former-bookseller and future-librarian from Perth who writes short stories and historical fiction. Her work has appeared in numerous anthologies as well as Westerly journal. When she’s not writing, she can often be found with her nose in a book.
Bindy Pritchard is a Perth-based writer, whose short fiction appears in various anthologies and literary journals such as Westerly, Kill Your Darlings and Review of Australian Fiction. Bindy has a Graduate Diploma in Creative Writing from Curtin University. Fabulous Lives is her debut short story collection.
Rosemary Sayer is a writer, business communications consultant and former journalist. Her third book More to the Story - conversations with refugees was published in 2015 by Margaret River Press. Rosemary lectures and tutors in human rights and writing at Curtin University...
Nicole Sinclair’s short fiction and non-fiction has appeared in the Review of Australian Fiction, Westerly, indigo Journal and Award Winning Australian Writing, and also forms part of the artworks along Busselton Jetty. Her short stories have won the Katharine Susannah Prichard Short Fiction Award and the Down South Writers...
Laurie Steed is a writer and editor from Perth, Western Australia. His fiction has been broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and has appeared in Best Australian Stories, Award Winning Australian Writing, The Age, Meanjin, Island, Westerly, and elsewhere. His debut novel...
Andrew Taylor is the author of more than sixteen books of poems, the libretti of two operas, numerous essays, a pioneering study of Australian poetry, and translations from German and Italian. He has taught at universities in Australia, Germany and China and since leaving Perth...
Colin Varney spent a feckless youth – and much of a feckless middle-age – drumming in pub bands. Not musically adept enough to play covers, he was reduced to collaborating on original songs and was therefore unable to relinquish his day job. He now finds himself drawn to writing about music and musicians. His short…
Miriam juggles her writing life with a wild array of other jobs including parenting, piano teaching, domestic chores and curriculum development for Sheridan College. She loves the poetry of the Margaret River landscape and hunting for orchids in spring time with Em.
Robert Wood is interested in landscape, ecology, and place. He has published his work in journals in Australia and internationally. Robert’s work has been translated into Spanish, Marathi, and Mandarin amongst other languages. At present, Robert is writing about his youth in between the suburbs and the Indian Ocean. He also has an ongoing series of…
Editors
Jon Gresham was born in England, grew up in Australia and has lived in Singapore and Thailand for the last 19 years. Jon’s debut collection of short stories, We Rose Up Slowly, was published by Math Paper Press in 2015. Jon is also a co-founder of the Singaporean literary community, Sing Lit Station. He leads…
Elizabeth Tan was born in Perth to Singaporean parents. She completed her PhD in Creative Writing at Curtin University, where she now works as a sessional tutor. Her debut novel, Rubik, has been published in Australia (Brio, 2017), North America (The Unnamed Press, 2018), and the United Kingdom (Wundor Editions, 2018). More recently, her work…
Sisonke Msimang is the author of Always Another Country: A memoir of exile and home. She is a South African writer whose work is focussed on race, gender and democracy. She has written for a range of international publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, Newsweek and Al Jazeera.
Michelle Cahill's short stories, Letter to Pessoa won the UTS Glenda Adams Award, the NSW Premier's Literary Award for New Writing and was shortlisted in the Steele Rudd Queensland Literary Awards. She won the Hilary Mantel International Short Story Prize and was shortlisted in the ABR Elizabeth Jolley Prize.
Ryan O’Neill is the author of The Weight of a Human Heart and Their Brilliant Careers. He was born in Glasgow in 1975 and has lived in Africa, Europe and Asia before settling in Newcastle, Australia, with his wife and two daughters. His fiction has appeared…
Ellen van Neerven is an award-winning Indigenous Australian writer. Her first book, Heat and Light (UQP, 2014), was the recipient of the David Unaipon Award, the Dobbie Literary Award and the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards Indigenous Writers Prize. Heat and Light was also shortlisted...
Laurie Steed is a writer and editor from Perth, Western Australia. His fiction has been broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and has appeared in Best Australian Stories, Award Winning Australian Writing, The Age, Meanjin, Island, Westerly, and elsewhere. His debut novel...
Estelle Tang is the culture editor at Elle. Before that, she was a literary scout and a contributor to Rookie. Her writing has been published in The Guardian, The Age, The Australian, Salon, Pitchfork, The Monthly, and several other publications. She is a program...
Richard Rossiter is an experienced academic, editor and writer. He is an Honorary Associate Professor at Edith Cowan University. His book length publication...
Susan Midalia is a former academic who is now a full-time fiction writer. She has published two collections of short stories: A History of the Beanbag (2007), shortlisted for the Western Australian Premier’s Book Award, and An Unknown Sky (2012). She was one...
Short Story Winners
Kit Scriven has been published in Island and short story anthologies. He won the Olga Master Short Story Award in 2016 and 2017, and the SALA Short Story Prize in 2016. He has been highly commended or shortlisted in several other short story competitions. Winning Story 2019: ‘We’ll Stand In That Place’.
Andrew Roff is the recipient of a 2018 Varuna House Residential Fellowship. His work has appeared in Overland and Antithesis Journal. In 2016 he was shortlisted for the Wakefield Press Unpublished Manuscript...
Laura Elvery is a writer from Brisbane. She has been published in Griffith Review, The Big Issue Fiction Edition, Review of Australian Fiction and Joiner Bay and other stories (MRP). Laura's debut short story collection, "Trick of the Light"...
Jo Riccioni’s stories have appeared in Best Australian Stories 2010 and 2011, The Age, and literary journals in Australia and the UK. Her first novel, The Italians at Cleat’s Corner Store, won the International Rubery Award for fiction in 2015.
Melanie Napthine is a Melbourne-based writer with a particular fondness for the short story form, though she also currently has a couple of novels on the go. She works in educational publishing, and any time left over is spent reading, running, travelling and parenting...
Ruth Wyer is a fledgling writer from south-west Sydney who composes stories by typing them one-fingered on her iPhone any spare chance she gets. It's an inefficient writing process, as she spends almost as much time backspacing over autocorrect as actually progressing, but her brain often feels...
Barry Divola is a journalist and author from Sydney. He writes regularly for Rolling Stone, The Sydney Morning Herald, Men's Style, the (sydney) magazine and Monocle (UK) and 314 notes on contributors he is the long‑time music critic at Who magazine. Barry has published seven books...
Beverley Lello lives on a bush block in NE Victoria with her husband. The children have grown up and moved north and she now has more time to cycle, trek and write. Country town life and travelling are the inspiration for many of her stories and plays. Several of her stories...
More than anything, Margaret River Press offers an engaging, approachable alternative to mass publication, selecting those titles that speak to us, and bringing them to you, the reader.