Ruth Park

Marion Halligan has published some 20 books. Her novel Valley of Grace won the 2010 ACT Book of the Year Award. One of Australia’s most important writers, she was awarded an AM in 2006. Her most recent book is Shooting the Fox.

Marion Halligan was born in Newcastle NSW, by the sea, and has lived most of her adult life in Canberra, with periods in Paris. She has published some twenty books, and has been short–listed for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and the Miles Franklin Literary Awar. She has been awarded the Age Book of the Year, the ACT Book of the Year (three times), the Nita B. Kibble Award, the Steele Rudd Award, the Braille Book of the Year, the 3M Talking Book of the Year and the Geraldine Pascall Prize for critical writing.

She believes fiction illuminates our lives, and for this reason she loves to read it as well as write it. In 2006, Marion Halligan was awarded an AM for her services to literature.

Lili Wilkinson is the award-winning author of eighteen books for young people, including The Erasure Initiative and After the Lights Go Out. Lili has a PhD from the University of Melbourne, and is a passionate advocate for YA and the young people who read it, establishing the Inky Awards at the Centre for Youth Literature, State Library of Victoria. Her latest book is A Hunger of Thorns.

Anne Phelan has been an actor since 1968. She’s appeared in shows from Prisoner to Neighbours and almost everything in between, including four years as Kate in Bellbird.

Since proudly joining Actors’ Equity in 1968, Anne has worked in all aspects of the industry and is a familiar face on our TV screens. She is the recipient of eight Best Actress Awards including an AFI award for Mumma in Poor Man’s Orange. She was voted the Variety Club TV Actress of the Year for her role in The Harp in the South and received two Television Society of Australia Awards for her role as Myra Desmond in the ever popular Prisoner. She picked up her second AFI award for Mon Taylor in Something In the Air.

On stage, Anne has appeared in over 50 shows. She feels especially privileged to have worked on many Australian plays. Anne has completed two very successful seasons of her own show An Accidental Actress, and she’s appeared in the films The Devil’s Playground and Charlie & Boots.

In 2007 Anne was awarded an Order Of Australia for her services to the arts and to the community. She is the patron of Positive Women Victoria, a support organization for women living with HIV. She is a member of Actors For Refugees, performers who tell the true stories of Australia’s refugees and asylum seekers. Anne is proud to have been inducted onto the Victorian Honour Roll of Women.