The Great Australian Writers' Collection 2013

Judy Nunn’s career has been long, illustrious and multifaceted. After combining her internationally successful acting career with scriptwriting for television and radio, Judy decided in the 90s to turn her hand to prose. Her first three novels, The Glitter Game, Centre Stage and Araluen, set respectively in the worlds of television, theatre and film, became instant bestsellers, and the rest is history, quite literally in fact. She has since developed a love of writing Australian historically-based fiction and her fame as a novelist has spread rapidly throughout Europe where she has been published in English, German, French, Dutch, Czech and Spanish. Her subsequent bestsellers, Kal, Beneath the Southern Cross, Territory, Pacific, Heritage, Floodtide, Maralinga, Tiger Men, Elianne, Spirits of the Ghan, Sanctuary, Khaki Town and Showtime! confirmed Judy’s position as one of Australia’s leading fiction writers. She has now sold over one million books in Australia alone. In 2015 Judy was made a Member of the Order of Australia for her "significant service to the performing arts as a scriptwriter and actor of stage and screen, and to literature as an author".

Thomas Keneally was born in 1935 and his first novel was published in 1964. Since then he has written a considerable number of novels and non-fiction works. His novels include The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, Schindler's List and The People's Train. He has won the Miles Franklin Award, the Booker Prize, the Los Angeles Times Prize, the Mondello International Prize and has been made a Literary Lion of the New York Public Library, a Fellow of the American Academy, recipient of the University of California gold medal, and is now the subject of a 55 cent Australian stamp. He has held various academic posts in the United States, but lives in Sydney.

Paul Ham is the author of 12 books, including Passchendaele: Requiem for Doomed Youth (2016), 1914: The Year the World Ended (2013), Hiroshima Nagasaki (2011), Vietnam: The Australian War (2007) and Kokoda (2004). Passchendaele won the Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-Fiction. Hiroshima Nagasaki was shortlisted for the Prime Minister's Literary Award for History and is being made into a 6-part TV series by an American-British-Australian production team. Vietnam won the New South Wales Premier’s Prize for Australian History and was shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s Literary Award (2008). Kokoda was shortlisted for the Walkley Award for Non-Fiction and the New South Wales Premier’s Prize for Non-Fiction. Sandakan: The Untold Story of the Sandakan Death Marches, was published in 2012 and was also shortlisted for the 2013 Prime Minister’s Literary Award for History. A former Sunday Times correspondent, with a Master’s degree from the London School of Economics, Paul lives in Paris and devotes his time to writing history and (when possible) to teaching Narrative History at Sciences Po, France's preeminent tertiary school for the humanities.

In a working life of more than fifty years, Mike Carlton was one of Australia's best-known media figures in radio, television and newspapers. Beginning as a cadet journalist at the ABC, he became a war correspondent in Vietnam and was the ABC's Bureau Chief in Jakarta. He also reported for the ABC from London, New York and major Asian capitals. In television, he worked on the ABC's ground-breaking This Day Tonight in the 1970s and for Nine Network News and A Current Affair. In 1980 Mike turned to talk radio, first in Sydney then in London’, where he won a coveted Sony Radio Academy award in 1993 for Britain's best talk breakfast show. His radio satire on current affairs, Friday News Review, was ‘must listening’ in Australia and the UK. For many years he wrote a popular weekly column for the Sydney Morning Herald. Mike has had a life-long passion for naval history and is the author of Cruiser, First Victory, Flagship, The Scrap Iron Flotilla and Dive!. In 2025 he received a Navy Gold Commendation for his outstanding commitment and contribution to the Royal Australian Navy. It's very rare for someone outside Defence to receive a commendation and Mike's contribution was described as ‘exemplary’ by the Navy's chief, Vice Admiral Hammond.

Richard Flanagan was born in Tasmania in 1961. His novels Death of a River Guide, The Sound of One Hand Clapping, Gould’s Book of Fish, The Unknown Terrorist, Wanting and The Narrow Road to the Deep North have received numerous honours and are published in 42 countries. He won the Man Booker Prize for The Narrow Road to the Deep North in 2014.

Nicole Alexander has a Master of Letters in Creative Writing and her novels, poetry, travel, writing and genealogy articles have been published in Australia, America, Singapore, New Zealand, Germany, Ukraine and Canada. She is the author of twelve novels: The Bark Cutters, A Changing Land, Absolution Creek, Sunset Ridge, The Great Plains, Wild Lands, River Run, An Uncommon Woman, Stone Country, The Cedar Tree, The Last Station. and The Limestone Road Nicole lives in north-west NSW.

Susan Duncan enjoyed a 25-year career spanning radio, newspaper and magazine journalism, including editing two of Australia's top selling women's magazines, The Australian Women's Weekly and New Idea. Susan has published two bestselling memoirs, Salvation Creek and its sequel, The House at Salvation Creek, and two novels, The Briny Café and Gone Fishing.

Caroline Overington is the Associate Editor of the iconic magazine, The Australian Women's Weekly. Caroline has won the Walkley Award for Excellence in Journalism twice, and she's a former winner of the Sir Keith Murdoch prize for journalism, and of the Blake Dawson prize. She is the author of five bestselling novels: Ghost Child, I Came to Say Goodbye, Matilda is Missing, Sisters of Mercy and No Place Like Home.

Peter FitzSimons is a journalist with the Sydney Morning Herald and Sun-Herald, and a busy events and motivational speaker. He is the author of over twenty-seven books, including Tobruk, Kokoda, Batavia, Eureka, Ned Kelly, Gallipoli and biographies of Douglas Mawson, Nancy Wake‚ Kim Beazley‚ Nick Farr-Jones‚ Les Darcy, Steve Waugh and John Eales, and is one of Australia's biggest selling non-fiction authors of the last fifteen years. Peter was named a Member of the Order of Australia for service to literature as a biographer, sports journalist and commentator, and to the community through contributions to conservation, disability care, social welfare and sporting organisations. He lives with his wife, Lisa Wilkinson, and their three children in Sydney.