Debut Mondays

Mara Coson is a young writer from the Philippines. She has just completed her Masters in Creative Media (Creative Writing) at RMIT and is currently writing her first novella. She has been published in Voiceworks twice and is a contributor to the Philippine Daily Inquirer. She also writes short fiction and makes zines.

Mara Coson was isolated from other babies as a result of coming out before her mother reached the operating room. She was born blue. At seven, she tried to run away but couldn’t go past the gate of her house. That same year, she believed that the Holy Spirit told her to become a nun and experienced a crisis. At twelve, she wanted to be in a band famous for not wearing bras. She never learned how to play the guitar, but her long-haired guitar teacher told her a Sanskrit story that a man wanted to kill himself and chanted rama rama rama, until it became mara mara mara, meaning wisdom, and chose to live.

The young Filipino writer eventually picked up her bags and moved to Melbourne to study, where she had her hair chopped off and became a wordplay pun-dit, dashboard zinemaker and writer.

Leah Swann lives in Melbourne with her husband and two children. She is a former speech writer, public relations manager and journalist. Bearings is her first book.

Leah Swann is a writer of short stories, novels, children’s stories and poetry. Her short fiction and poetry have appeared in page seventeen, masthead and Reflections on Melbourne. She loves wintry nights storytelling around a fire, dancing, drawing, watching theatre, wicked jokes and conversation.

Elisabeth Holdsworth is an essayist, poet, and writer of short stories and reviews. She won the inaugural ABR/Calibre prize for her essay, ‘An die Nachgeborenen: For Those Who Come After’, which was published in the February 2007 issue of Australian Book Review and later broadcast on ABC radio.

Elisabeth’s writing has been published in Best Australian Essays, Heat, Southerly, Island, The Monthly, Mattoid and Transnational.

Born in the Netherlands just after WWII in the south-western province of Zeeland, Elisabeth’s name is de Rijke-Nassau, one of the branches of the Nassaus sharing the common ancestry of Charlemagne and Willem and Juliana de Rijke. The de Rijkes, and their identification as part of the fabric of Middleburg and the island of Walcheren, can be traced back to the thirteenth century.

Elisabeth came to Australia with her parents in 1959. Apart from her writing, she is involved in arts patronage and is an active collector. She lives with her husband in Goulburn, NSW.

Felicity Everett began her career as a writer as an author of children’s books. Working as a children’s books editor in London for years and authoring 18 children’s books, it wasn’t until 2000 Felicity started writing adult fiction.

Felicity Everett grew up in Manchester the youngest of four children. After taking creative writing course at Goldsmith’s College, London Felicity began to write what would become her first published adult novel, The Story of Us. Just as it was set to be published in the UK and after 25 years in London, Felicity and her family moved to Melbourne, where she now lives with her husband and younger two children. Felicity is currently working on her second novel, a sequel to The Story of Us.

The Story of Us is the story of the generation of women who grew up in the wake of the feminist’s revolution. The women who during the 70s and 80s were told they could have it all, only to find that ‘having it all’ isn’t all it cracked up to be. The novel follows a group of friends from youth into adulthood. When an unexpected tragedy throws their dissatisfactions into stark perspective it is a chance to re-dedicate themselves to their friendship, their misdirected lives, and their survival.