Things That Are Found in Trees & Other Stories

Bernice Barry has lived in Margaret River for eleven years and works mainly from home as an education consultant. After twenty years as an adviser on literacy and international curriculum innovation, she found in WA’s South West a personal balance of peace and challenge, creating a native garden in the bush and managing each day’s wildlife adventures. She has written many publications on education, from language development programs for young children and books for teachers to online training courses for school principals. Her personal writing has always remained private, until now.

Liliane Grace writes short stories, plays, articles, novels and the odd poem—many of which have been published or awarded. Her self-published book, The Mastery Club marries her love of fiction and her love of personal growth; so far over 12,000 copies have been sold in Australia and China. Liliane has taught Creative Writing for some 24 years. She has three gorgeous young adult children who were largely home educated and a much loved, tech-savvy hubby who created her website: www.lilianegrace.com

William Lane lives on the north coast of NSW with his wife and three children. He has a degree in Australian literature and is trained as a schoolteacher. William loves reading, writing and music. He is currently writing a doctorate through the University of Queensland on the short stories of Christina Stead.

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 have been published in Stringybark Fiction and in 2011 she won the Albury City Short Story Competition and the Stringybark Fiction Award. She has had several short plays performed by theatre companies in Canberra, Melbourne and Sydney and her home town of Yackandandah.

Georgina Luck has published short stories in Griffith REVIEW, Southerly, Overland, Etchings, Famous Reporter, Woorilla and The Broadkill Review. She received the 2009 Griffith REVIEW / Text Publishing Emerging Writers Award—Fiction and was highly commended in the 2008 Marian Eldridge Award. She has won two playwriting awards and has received a Varuna Fellowship and an Australian Society of Authors mentorship.

Catherine Moffat is a writer who lives on the NSW Central Coast. Her work has been published in literary journals and on ABC radio. Catherine is a regular blogger for Meanjin and Overland.

Christine Piper is a Doctor of Creative Arts candidate at the University of Technology, Sydney, and a freelance journalist. Her writing has appeared in Australian Book Review, The Sydney Morning Herald and GQ, among other publications. She was born in Seoul, South Korea and has lived in Japan several times but is currently based in Sydney, where she is completing a historical fiction novel about Japanese civilian internees. She is the recipient of a Varuna Writing Retreat Fellowship and CAL’s Creative Industries’ Career Fund.

Jane Skelton has published short fiction in a wide range of magazines and anthologies. Formerly of Queensland, Jane has lived in the Blue Mountains, NSW for the past ten years. She has a Master of Arts in Communication and Media, and is finalising a thesis for a Doctorate in Creative Arts at the University of Western Sydney. The natural environment, from the coast to the mountains, is a strong presence in her writing. Her novel, earth eaters, was a winner in the Byron Bay Writers Festival LitLink Unpublished Manuscript awards in 2010. She is currently completing another novel, 1983. Website :http://janeskelton.com.au/

Rajasree Variyar was born in Bangalore, but arrived in Australia as a six-month-old and grew up in Western Sydney, participating in a ridiculous amount of extra-curricular activities and with a voracious appetite for books. She graduated from the University of Sydney in 2009 with majors in Indonesian Studies, Finance and International Relations and a minor in Classical Archaeology. This mix of subject areas is quite reflective of her confusion around what her career path should be. She is currently working in strategic product development in ANZ Direct Insurance. Writing is very much a creative outlet for her, and it would be a dream come true to one day have a published novel in her name.

Kerry Lown Whalen taught English at the Barrier Reef Institute of TAFE in Queensland for 22 years before she and her husband moved to the Gold Coast. She has won prizes in several literary competitions and had her short stories A Tidy Sum, Flash Harry, Arcadia, Questions, Crossroads, Mirage and The Way Things Were published in books and magazines.

Jacqueline Winn lives on a farm at Possum Brush on the Mid-North Coast of NSW. She writes short stories, novels, poetry and scripts and has won awards for short fiction and poetry in Australia, New Zealand and UK. A number of her stories have been published in anthologies and literary magazines in Australia, UK and Ireland. She has two collections of short stories Once More With Feeling and Salt & Pepper, published by Ginninderra Press. More about Jacqui and her writing at www.jacquelinewinn.com