A Gala Night of Storytelling 2011:Voices From Elsewhere

Yannick Haenel is an award winning French novelist.

Yannick Haenel is the author of several novels, including Introduction à la mort française and Évoluer parmi les avalanches. In Paris in 1997 he co-founded the avant-garde journal for literature, Ligne de risque.

The Messenger (published in French as Jan Karski) won the Prix Interallié and the Prix du roman FNAC in 2009.

Sonya Hartnett is the award-winning, internationally-acclaimed author of several novels for adults and younger readers.

Sonya authored Thursday’s Child, winner of the 2002 Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize, and Forest, winner of the 2002 Children’s Book Council of Australia Book of the Year: Older Readers. In 2000 and again in 2003, she was named one of The Sydney Morning Herald Young Novelists of the Year. Her work has been published internationally with editions available in the UK, US, Canada, Germany, Italy, Norway and Denmark.

In 2003, her adult novel, Of a Boy, won The Age Book of the Year and was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award. In 2004, The Silver Donkey was published to great critical acclaim. It has won the 2005 Brisbane Courier Mail award for young readers and was CBC Book of the Year (Young readers) in 2005.

Surrender was published in 2005. It was shortlisted for The Age Book of the Year Award and the Aurealis Award - Fantasy Division in 2005.

In 2008 Sonya was the recipient of The Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award. The prize is awarded to authors, illustrators, narrators and/or promoters of reading whose work reflects the spirit of Astrid Lindgren. It was the first time this award was given to an Australian.

John Birmingham is the author of the cult classic He Died With a Felafel in His Hand and most recently the thriller, Without Warning.

He has also written the award-winning history Leviathan and the trilogy comprising Weapons of Choice: World War 2.1, Designated Targets: World War 2.2 and Final Impact: World War 2.3.

Between writing books he contributes to a wide range of newspapers and magazines on topics as diverse as biotechnology and national security.

Before becoming a writer he began his working life as research officer with the Defence Department’s Office of Special Clearances and Records.

Nam Le’s first book, The Boat, was translated into fifteen languages and received over a dozen major awards in Australia, America and Europe including the PEN/Malamud Award, the Dylan Thomas Prize, the Australian Prime Minister’s Literary Award, the Melbourne Prize for Literature and the NSW Premier's Literary Award for Book of the Year.

The Boat was selected as a book of the year by over thirty venues around the world, and its stories have been widely anthologised, adapted and taught. In May 2019, Le published On David Malouf as part of Black Inc's 'Writers on Writers' series. He lives in Melbourne.

Dagmar Leupold is a German poet.

Dagmar Leupold studied German literature, philosophy, and classical philology in Marburg and Tübingen, and comparative literature in New York, where she received her doctorate. She lives in Kirchseeon near Munich.

In 2010 she will hold the Liliencron Chair for Poetics at the University of Kiel this year. Her poetry publications include Wie Treibholz (Like Driftwood), Die Lust der Frauen auf Seite 13 (Women’s Desire on page 13), Byrons Feldbett (Byron’s Cot), and Destillate (Distillations) which contains short stories as well. Her novels are Federgewicht (Featherweight), and Ende der Saison (End of the Season).

Abha Dawesar is an Indian novelist based in New York.

Abha Dawesar is the author of four critically acclaimed novels: Family Values, That Summer in Paris, Babyji and Miniplanner. She is the recipient of numerous honors including the American Library Association’s Stonewall Book Award and a Lambda Literary Award.

India’s leading weekly magazine India Today named Dawesar as one of twenty-five path-breaking Indians in 2007 and she was named one of India’s 12 remarkable women by Femina magazine. Babyji was short-listed for France’s most important literary award for foreign fiction Le Prix Médicis-Roman Etranger and also for Le Prix Bel Ami. The French translation of Family Values was shortlisted for the Prix Médicis Etranger, the Prix Femina, and the Prix RFI-témoin du monde.

Mem Fox has written over 38 books for adults and children including Possum Magic, which has sold over three million copies and is the bestselling picture book ever in Australia. Mem has been presented with many awards including an AM in the 1993 Australia Day Honours for services to the cultural life of Australia; an SA Great Award for Literature in 2001; the Prime Minister's Centenary Medal in 2003; and she was shortlisted for the Australian of the Year in 2004. She worked as an Associate Professor of Literacy Studies in the School of Education at Flinders University, South Australia for twenty-four years and is now an international literacy consultant.

Mem's books with Penguin include Where is the Green Sheep?, Hunwick's Egg, A Particular Cow, Where The Giant Sleeps, Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes, Hello Baby!, The Goblin and the Empty Chair, A Giraffe in the Bath and most recently Baby Bedtime. She lives in Adelaide, Australia.

Murong Xuecun is one of contemporary China’s most celebrated authors and the winner of the 2010 People’s Literature Prize for his most recent book The Missing Ingredient.

Born in 1974 in China’s North East, Murong spent his childhood in Jilin province. In 1996 he graduated from China University of Political Science and Law in Beijing. Afterwards he worked as an HR manager for a cosmetics company. He started to write in 2001. In 2002. when his novel Leave Me Alone: A novel of Chengdu (published in China as Chengdu Please Forget Me Tonight) took China by storm, Murong gave up his job and devoted himself to writing full time.

Having declined membership of the China Writers’ Society, he is regarded as an ‘independent’ writer. In the past few years he has travelled around China, living in Chengdu, Shenzhen, Hangzhou, Hainan Island and Lhasa. He currently lives in Guangzhou where he runs an advertising company. His other four books include Heaven on the Left, Shenzhen on the Right, Countless People Die of Greed and, in October 2008, released Dancing Through Red Dust which has sold an estimated 100,000 copies in China.

On the night he was awarded the 2010 People’s Literature Prize, Murong intended to give a speech criticising China’s censorship of writers. The speech was to include the following: “The only reality is that we cannot speak reality. The only viewpoint is that we cannot have a viewpoint. We cannot criticise the system, cannot discuss things. Sometimes I can’t resist thinking: has the Cultural Revolution really finished?” Murong was prevented from delivering his speech.

Archie Roach’s song ‘Took the Children Away’ won an International Human Rights Achievement Award and his first album Charcoal Lane featured in US Rolling Stone magazine’s Top 50 in 1992, going gold in Australia and winning two ARIA awards. Archie’s recording history – including 12 albums, soundtracks, film and theatrical scores – has been hugely successful, hitting ARIA charts and winning awards, year in, year out.