Travelling with Intent

Jacinta Halloran is a Melbourne GP and writer. She has written on medical topics for a wide variety of publications, including the Sunday Age and Inside Story. Her second novel, Pilgrimage, was recently published (Scribe Publications, 2012).

In 2005 her short story, ‘Finding Joshua,’ won the inaugural Australian Doctor GP Writer of the Year Award. In 2007 her novel, Dissection, was shortlisted for the Victorian Premier’s Literary Prize for an Unpublished Manuscript, and was published by Scribe Publications in 2008. She has also had short stories published in The Pen and the Stethoscope and New Australian Stories 2.0.

Jacinta completed an MA in Creative Writing at RMIT in 2009. She continues to work part-time as a GP, and also teaches ethics and empathic practice in the University of Melbourne postgraduate medical program.

Jenny Niven was the Wheeler Centre’s Associate Director. She is currently Portfolio Manager for Literature, Publishing and Languages at Creative Scotland.

Jenny came to Australia in early 2010 after 6 years in Beijing, where she directed the events program at The Bookworm, China’s foremost English-language literary events venue. She was director and co-founder of The Bookworm International Literary Festival, which runs annually across the three Chinese cities of Beijing, Chengdu and Suzhou.

Jenny was books editor at Time Out Beijing from 2006 to 2008. She contributed to Beijing: Portrait of a City, published by Odyssey in March 2008, as well as numerous travel guides. She joined the Wheeler Centre staff after holding the position of Program Manager at the Melbourne Writers Festival.

Jenny is originally from Scotland where, prior to leaving in 2004, she gained an undergraduate degree in Scottish Literature and Film and a masters degree in journalism. She was an arts researcher for Hopscotch Films and BBC Scotland and spent April and May 08 and 09 working on the PEN World Voices Festival in New York. In case it isn’t already crystal clear, she likes books and travel.

Steven Amsterdam is the award-winning author of Things We Didn't See Coming (winner of the Age Book of the Year, shortlisted for the NSW Premier's Award for Fiction and longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award) and What the Family Needed (Australian Women's Weekly Great Read and longlisted for the Dublin IMPAC literary award). He lives in Melbourne, where he works as a palliative care nurse, with his partner.