The Wheeler Centre Gala 2012: Stories to Believe In

Andy Griffiths started having adventures the moment he was born, and has been having them (and writing about them) ever since. You can find out more at www.andygriffiths.com.au

Gillian Mears grew up in the northern New South Wales town of Grafton. Acclaim came early, with her short story collections and novels winning major prizes.

Her books include Ride a Cock Horse (1988), Fineflour (1990), winner of a Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Book, The Mint Lawn (1991), winner of the Australian/Vogel Literary Award, and The Grass Sister (1995), winner of the regional Commonwealth Prize for Best Book. A Map of the Gardens (2002) won the 2003 Steele Rudd Australian Short Story Award.

Elliot Perlman is an award-winning writer of one short story collection and three novels. He lives in Melbourne, where he also works as a barrister.

Elliot has published the novels Three Dollars (1998), Seven Types of Ambiguity (2003) and The Street Sweeper (2011), as well as the short story collection The Reasons I Won’t Be Coming (1999).

Casey Bennetto is an award-winning writer, musician and radio broadcaster. He wrote the musical KEATING!, hosts the program Superfluity on Melbourne’s 3RRR, and has appeared in places as diverse as ABCTV’s Spicks and Specks, the Melbourne International Arts Festival and the Festival of Dangerous Ideas at Sydney Opera House.

Born in 1969, Bennetto spent his formative years amongst the fragrant meadows and blossoming malls of Greensborough, Melbourne.

He made his way to university, procured a BA and worked variously as a proofreader, a copywriter, an IT specialist and as the lead singer in the band Skin, which garnered national commercial airplay for their 1994 EP, Waking Up With You.

As part of the ‘Drowsy Drivers’ project, in 2004 Casey wrote a musical theatre biography of former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating for the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, KEATING!.

In late 2008, Casey premiered a new project as part of the Melbourne International Arts Festival: A Largely Fanciful History Of The Spiegeltent, in which he also starred; he also wrote and performed in 2009's Evening and provided the songs for the ever-threatening Christmas pantomime The Terminativity in 2010–11. He served as dramaturge on Eddie’s Shane Warne: The Musical as well as making contributions to Company B’s The Adventures Of Snugglepot And Cuddlepie and Die Roten Punkte’s Super Musikant and Kunst Rock.

He scored both series of Amanda Brotchie and Adam Zwar's Lowdown and was nominated for an AACTA with Shellie Morris and Tim Cole for work on the 2014 musical documentary Prison Songs. He appeared with Alan Brough as underappreciated alternative rock icons The Narelles in 2015, and has hosted A Swingin' Bella Christmas for the past five years. He has hosted The Show Of The Year for the Wheeler Centre since the show's inception in 2013.

Most recently, he scored the ABC TV series Get Krack!n and is currently working on several things at once, obviously to the detriment of all of them.

Casey has also hosted a regular show on 3CR, worked extensively for PBS FM and made many appearances on 774 ABC Melbourne as host, co-host and guest.

His appearances on ABC TV’s Spicks And Specks resurface occasionally to shame him.

Bob Franklin is a highly respected writer, actor and comedian (perhaps most recognisable from The Librarians, Stupid Stupid Men and Thank God You’re Here).

He recently wrote and directed a short film called Corrections and has several other projects in pipelines. Bob’s work has been described in The Age as ‘genuinely subversive, dank and nasty’ and by the Herald Sun as ‘particularly dreadful’.

The stories in his debut collection Under Stones are not horror per se; they are much more unsettling than that. They are tales of unease set in familiar surrounds and whispered in your ear by a friendly stranger.

Lally Katz is an award-winning Melbourne based playwright. Her play Goodbye Vaudeville Charlie Mudd premiered at Malthouse Theatre and won the Louis Esson Prize for Drama at the 2009 Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards.

Lally is a graduate of the University of Melbourne’s School of Studies in Creative Arts and she studied playwriting at London’s Royal Court Theatre. She is a core member of Stuck Pigs Squealing Theatre which has built a reputation as one of the country’s most exciting theatre companies. Lally’s newest work, three short plays featuring one of her recurring characters, The Apocalypse Bear Trilogy, recently opened as part of the Melbourne International Arts Festival.

Recently Lally adapted selected stories from the bible, forming parts one and three (co-adapter) of The Mysteries: Genesis directed by Matthew Lutton and Tom Wright premiering at Sydney Theatre Company. Lally’s play When The Hunter Returns was commissioned and produced by The Gaiety School of Acting in Ireland and had a return season at the Dublin Theatre Festival.

Lally has active commissions with, Company B, Malthouse Theatre, Arena Theatre Company and continues to develop a new work, 9 Days Falling, with New York playwright Mac Wellman. She has been awarded a British Council Realise Your Dreams grant for 2010.

Alice Pung OAM is the author of the bestselling memoirs Unpolished Gem and Her Father’s Daughter, and the essay collection Close to Home, as well as the editor of the anthologies Growing Up Asian in Australia and My First Lesson ...

Kaz Cooke is a former reporter and cartoonist turned history detective. She is also the author of the bestselling books Up The Duff, Kidwrangling, Girl Stuff, Girl Stuff 8–12, Women’s Stuff, and the children's picture books Wanda Linda Goes Berserk and The Terrible Underpants.

Her new novel, Ada, grew out of her research and exhibition during a Creative Fellowship at the State Library of Victoria, 2013–2015.

Randa Abdel-Fattah is a well-known writer and scholar who is currently a postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Sociology at Macquarie University, Sydney.

Her books include Islamophobia and Everyday Multiculturalism and she serves on the editorial boards of Journal of the Contemporary Study of Islam and Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies. Randa is also a prominent Palestinian and anti-racism advocate, and the multi-award-winning author of 11 novels published in over 20 countries. She is co-editor of the anthology Arab, Australian, Other and is currently adapting her bestselling novel Does My Head Look Big in This? into a feature film.

Carrie Tiffany was born in West Yorkshire and grew up in Western Australia. She spent her early twenties working as a park ranger in Central Australia. Her first novel, Everyman’s Rules for Scientific Living (2005), was shortlisted for the Orange Prize, the Miles Franklin Literary Award, the Guardian First Book Award and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, and won the Dobbie Award and the WA Premier’s Award for Fiction. 

Mateship with Birds (2011) was also shortlisted for many awards and won the inaugural Stella Prize and the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction in the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards. She lives and works in Melbourne.