Celebrating Peter Temple

Kerryn Goldsworthy is a freelance writer and critic, and a former academic who lectured in literature at the University of Melbourne for 17 years.

A former editor of Australian Book Review and a member of the editorial team that produced The Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature (2009), she has edited four other anthologies of Australian writing and has published essays, articles, reviews, short stories and literary criticism – including a collection of short stories, North of the Moonlight Sonata, and a critical study of the work of Helen Garner. Her most recent book is Adelaide (2011) in the NewSouth ‘Cities’ series.

Kerryn was the Australian Book Review Ian Potter Foundation Fellow in 2013. In the same year, she won the Pascall Prize for cultural criticism, earning the title Australian Critic of the Year. She was the inaugural Chair of the Stella Prize judging panel (2013–2015) and won the 2017 Horne Prize for her essay ‘The Limit of the World’. She lives and works in her home town of Adelaide.

Gold Dagger winning and Edgar shortlisted author Michael Robotham was born in Australia in November 1960, and grew up in small country towns that had more dogs than people and more flies than dogs. He escaped in 1979 and became a cadet journalist on an afternoon newspaper in Sydney.

For the next 14 years he wrote for newspapers and magazines in Australia, Britain and America. As a senior feature writer for the UK’s Mail on Sunday he was among the first people to view the letters and diaries of Czar Nicholas II and his wife Empress Alexandra, unearthed in the Moscow State Archives in 1991. He also gained access to Stalin’s Hitler files, which had been missing for nearly fifty years until a cleaner stumbled upon a cardboard box that had been misplaced and misfiled.

In 1993, he quit journalism to become a ghostwriter, collaborating with politicians, pop stars, psychologists, adventurers and showbusiness personalities to write their autobiographies. Twelve of these non-fiction titles were bestsellers, with combined sales of more than 2 million copies.

His partially completed first novel, a psychological thriller called The Suspect, caused a bidding war at the London Book Fair in 2002. Soon afterwards it was chosen by the world’s largest consortium of book clubs as only the fifth International Book of the Month, making it the top recommendation to 28 million book club members in 15 countries. He has since written 12 further novels.

Michael lives on Sydney's northern beaches, where he thinks dark thoughts in his 'cabana of cruelty' – a name bestowed by his three daughters, who happily poke fun at the man who has fed, clothed and catered to their every expensive whim. Where is the justice?

Michael’s novels have since been translated into 23 languages and have won or been shortlisted for numerous awards, including:

• The Crime Writer's Association Gold Dagger (winner, 2015) Life or Death; (shortlisted, 2013) Say You're Sorry.
• The Crime Writer's Association Steel Dagger (shortlisted) The Night Ferry and Shatter.
• The Ned Kelly Award for Best Novel (winner, 2005 and 2008) Lost and Shatter.
• The Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award for Best Novel (shortlisted, 2016) Life or Death.

As well as being an author and editor, Michael Heyward is the managing director and publisher for Text Publishing, a multi-award-winning independent publishing company in Melbourne.

Text publishes Australian and international authors, including Barack Obama, Kate Grenville, Helen Garner, Tim Flannery, Yann Martel, Peter Temple, Carlos Ruiz Zafón, Lloyd Jones, Ta-Nehisi Coates, J.M. Coetzee, Graeme Simsion, Elena Ferrante, Gail Jones, Niccolò Ammaniti, Magda Szubanski, John McPhee, Herman Koch, and Gerald Murnane.

Louise Thurtell has worked in publishing for nearly 30 years – starting out at Harper Collins before moving to Transworld, Random House and Allen & Unwin. Louise will never forget sitting down to read the manuscript of Peter Temple's Bad Debts in 1995, and knowing within the first page she had to do everything in her power to buy it. She went on to publish five more of Temple's novels before taking a break from publishing to have children.

 In 2005, Louise was the recipient of Australia’s premier award for editing, the Beatrice Davis Editorial Fellowship. Louise’s most recent in-house publishing job involved setting up the Arena imprint at Allen & Unwin, where she also initiated Friday Pitch, Australian publishing’s first electronic submission system. Louise is now a freelance editor and publishing consultant.

Award-winning actress Marta Dusseldorp has worked extensively in theatre, film and television and is one of Australia’s most recognised actresses.

She received the 2015 AACTA Award for Best Lead Actress in a Television Drama for ABC’s Janet King in which she plays the title role. Marta stars in the popular series, A Place to Call Home for Foxtel with season five of the show having just completed production. Marta also stars in the latest instalment of the Jack Irish series, where she reprised her role as co-lead opposite Guy Pearce. Her numerous other television credits include the six-part Blackjack telemovies opposite Colin Friels, Crownies, Devil’s Dust, and the award winning mini-series After the Deluge.

Marta has a wealth of experience on stage including three years with the Sydney Theatre Company’s Actor’s Company where she received a Helpmann Award for her role in Shakespeare’s War of the Roses. Other STC highlights include Victory, The Lost Echo, Serpent’s Teeth, Mother Courage, The Crucible and Never Did Me Any Harm (STC/Force Majeure) Malthouse Theatre’s Journal of the Plague Year/Ham Funeral, MTC’s Three Sisters and The Balcony, Company B’s international tour of Cloudstreet and Like a Fishbone for the Sydney Theatre Company/Griffin Theatre. Most recently she starred to huge acclaim in Gloria for the Griffin Theatre.

Her film credits include Paul Cox’s award-winning Innocence, John Curran’s Praise, Bruce Beresford’s Paradise Road opposite Glenn Close, Francis McDormand and Cate Blanchett, and Jonathan Teplitzky’s Burning Man.

Born in Hamilton in western Victoria in 1953, Shane Maloney is one of Australia’s most popular novelists. His award-winning and much-loved Murray Whelan series – Stiff, The Brush-Off, Nice Try, The Big Ask, Something Fishy and Sucked In – has been published around the world. 

In 1996, The Brush-Off won the Ned Kelly Prize for Crime Fiction. In 2004, Stiff and The Brush-Off were made into telemovies starring David Wenham as Murray Whelan. In 2009, Shane Maloney was presented with the Crime Writers’ Association of Australia Lifetime Achievement Award.