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Youth Online Tutors 2013
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John Heffernan wanted to be lots of things when it came his time to morph into an adult. He wanted to be an inventor who designed things like a People-Making Machine, Hover-Boots or The Genius Thinking Cap. Instead, John went to university and did several degrees in all sorts of useless things like psychology and philosophy. Then he became a farmer with heaps of sheep and cows, horses and dogs, along with wombats, joeys, guinea pigs and giant jungle mice.
And then, one day, he morphed into an author, writing more than 20 booksabout horses and dogs, rats and pirates, kids in war, genius mice and mad scientists, ghosts and ghouls, as well as some serious books about growing up and families and trying to work out what life is all about. John reckons it’s the best thing he ever did, inventing stories around whatever exciting ideas happen to leap into his head. Better than growing up, that’s for sure. John has two websites: John Heffernan, and his Charlie Carter website, Charlie's Corner. |
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Sophie Masson: Born in Indonesia, of French parents, Sophie came to Australia with her family at the age of 5. All through her childhood years, the family went back and forth between Australia and France, so Sophie grew up between worlds, and between languages, something which has always influenced her work.
Sophie has published more than 50 books in Australia and internationally, for children, young adults and adults. Her books have been shortlisted for many awards. In 2002 her alternative history/mystery novel, The Hand of Glory, won the YA section of the Aurealis Awards. Her most recent novels are The Hunt for Ned Kelly (Scholastic 2010), The Phar Lap Mystery (Scholastic 2010), The Understudy's Revenge (Scholastic Feb 2011), and My Father's War (Scholastic April 2011). Forthcoming is The Boggle Hunters (Scholastic 2011). Sophie has also written short stories, articles and reviews, which have appeared in many publications. |
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Miles Merrill combines poetry with theatre, experimental audio, hip-hop beats, stand-up and political confrontation, flinging words in a rapid-fire onslaught of versified emotion. Born and raised in Chicago, now living in Sydney, he has opened for Saul Williams, jammed with Shane Koyczan, written and directed a show in the Sydney International Arts Festival, and performed solo at the Sydney Opera House. Miles created Australia’s first spoken-word festival—the Night Words Festival—and founded the national literary performance competition: the Australian Poetry Slam. Internationally, Merrill has performed in Krakow’s Audio Art, at writers festivals in Ubud, Calgary, Beijing and regional China. In Australia he has performed at festivals in Sydney, Perth, Byron Bay, Darwin and Adelaide. Merrill tours music festivals, theatres, galleries, bars and a wide variety of classy joints—anywhere his words will travel. He has toured to schools for the New England Writers Centre several times, and they always want him back. |
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Felicity Plunkett is a widely-published reviewer, writing for newspapers and journals including The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Australian, Australian Book Review and The Canberra Times. Felicity spent nine years of her academic career at UNE, where she was awarded a Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2002.
Her short story ‘Ruined Girls’ was commended in the Josephine Ulrick Prizes in 2010, and another, ‘Sleeping Like a Baby’ was a winner in the ABC Radio National ‘writers on our wavelength competition’ and produced for radio in 2003. She was for two years a winner of a $5000 poetry prize in the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Prize for ‘young poets of unusual promise’. Her debut collection of poetry, Vanishing Point, won the Arts Queensland Thomas Shapcott Prize and was shortlisted for the Western Australian Premier’s Book Awards, the Arts ACT Judith Wright Prize and the Anne Elder Award. Poet and critic David McCooey reviewing the collection described it as “extraordinary... dynamic ... intensely original and often comic” and Plunkett as a major new talent. Writing for the American journal of Australian Studies Antipodes, A. Frances Johnson wrote of ‘indelible emotional power’, ‘cut-glass brilliance’. ‘Plunkett’s poetic invocations of female desire … are often matchless’ and the collection ‘ a subtle marriage of irony and emotion’. Poet Stephen Lawrence praised an ‘intense, lyrical debut’. |
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Lesley Sly is a journalist, composer and author. Her music has been used in many soundtracks, won an international award in Berlin, and she has toured and recorded with bands in Australia, UK, Europe.
As a freelance journalist her work has appeared in many national and overseas publications, she was a columnist for Rolling Stone for 10 years and an arts writer for The Bulletin, she has worked as a magazine editor, consulting editor, travel writer for BBC Radio and newspapers in the UK, sub-editor for the Sydney Morning Herald and The Financial Review. Her 400-page book, The Power & The Passion, A guide to the Australian music industry, sold out its first print run and is a core text for contemporary music studies. She has taught at TAFE, and has run many creative writing workshops for children. |
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Fiona McDonald studied painting and drawing at the Julian Ashton Art School in Sydney in the late 1980s. After art school, Fiona began developing her life size figurative soft sculpture for which she has become well-known. Fiona has continued to make two dimensional art work as well as her sculpture, puppets and dolls.
The year 2010 saw the publication of Fiona’s first two knitting books: Babes in the Wool and Knitted Aliens, both published by Search Press, UK. Next year they will publish her Knitted Fairies book and then Knitted Vampires. Pen&Sword, another UK publisher is bringing out Fiona’s first non-fiction title Textiles: A History in June 2011 under their Remember When imprint. Fiona is currently writing a cultural and social overview of Britain in the 1920s, also for Remember When . She has exhibited widely throughout Australia, Britain, China and the US. Visit Fiona’s website and her blog |
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Bronwyn Parry
writes gritty romantic suspense novels, combining elements of the crime and romance genres in emotionally engaging, action-packed stories set in Australia’s wild places. She has three novels published by Hachette Australia, and is currently working on her fourth. Her first novel won a prestigious Golden Heart Award from the Romance Writers of America, and her second novel, Dark Country, was a finalist in the RITA Awards—the ‘Oscars’ of Romance Writing—and also in the Daphne Du Maurier Award.
Bronwyn is about to resume a PhD project exploring romance readers' and writers' internet communities and their perspectives on the genre. |
The New England Writers' Centre is assisted by the NSW Government through Arts NSW.