Literature board members
Dr Imre Salusinszky NSW (chair)
Dr Imre Salusinszky has been a journalist with The Australian since 2003, and is currently the newspaper's NSW political reporter and a regular columnist. He previously held positions as Associate Professor in English and Head of Department at the University of Newcastle. He has also been a lecturer at Yale University in the USA, and at the University of Melbourne. Dr Salusinszky is the author of many reviews, articles and books. He was also editor of the Oxford Book of Australian Essays, published in 1997. Prior to his appointment with the Australia Council, Imre served as a member of the editorial committees for Qudrant and HEAT. In 2003, he was awarded the Centenary Medal for services to Australian society through the study of English and scholarship.
Dr Jack Hibberd VIC
Dr Jack Hibberd has written over 30 plays since 1967. His most highly regarded play A Stretch of the Imagination, has been produced in the United Kingdom, the USA, Germany and China. Dr Hibberd has also written three novels, including Memoirs of an Old Bastard, and a number of poems which have been published in two volumes, Les Vin des Amants and The Genius of Human Perfection. He regularly reviews plays and books for the media and practices medicine part-time.
Dr Peter Holbrook QLD
Dr Peter Holbrook is a Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Queensland. He graduated with a First Class Honours degree in English and Ancient Greek from the University of Melbourne in 1982, and subsequently won a full scholarship to Yale University, where he earned an M.Phil. and Ph.D. in English. He has a particular interest in the poetry, prose and drama of the English Renaissance. His publications include Literature and Degree in Renaissance England: Nashe, Bourgeois Tragedy, Shakespeare (University of Delaware Press, 1994) and The Politics of the Stuart Court Masque (edited with David Bevington, Cambridge University Press, 1998). His essays and reviews have appeared in a range of publications in Australia and overseas. In 2006 he edited a special issue of The Shakespearean International Yearbook, which explored some connections between Shakespeare's works and those of the sixteenth-century French essayist Michel de Montaigne. Peter Holbrook enjoys teaching and writing about many different kinds of literary texts, from ancient to modern.
Prof Gail Jones NSW
Professor Gail Jones is professor in writing at the University of Western Sydney. She was educated at the University of Western Australia and was formerly an associate professor in the English department there. In 2001, she won The Australian University Teaching Award in the Humanities and the Arts category. Her research interests include gender and narrative theory, literary theory, postcolonial studies, cultural studies, creative writing, contemporary literature and film studies. Jones' collections of short stories, The House of Breathing and Fetish Lives have been translated into Italian and Czech. Her short stories have appeared in numerous journals and have been highly praised for their linguistic richness and intellectual complexity, their subtle humour and intricate craftwork. Her structually complex novel Black Mirror was described by the judges of the Nita Kibble Literary Award as "a witty interrogation of the problems faced by the biographer". Her 2007 novel Sorry was widely praised and became part of the national debate on the Stolen Generation.
Nicholas Jose SA
Author Nicholas Jose was born in 1952. He was Cultural Counsellor at the Australian Embassy, Beijing and Shanghai: 1987-1990. From 2002 to 2005 he was President of Sydney PEN. He has held the Chair of Creative Writing at the University of Adelaide since 2005. He is General Editor of the Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature. His most recent book is a novel, Original Face (2005). Black Sheep: Journey to Borroloola a memoir, appeared in 2002. Other books include the novels The Red Thread (2000), The Custodians (1997), The Rose Crossing (1994), Avenue of Eternal Peace (1989), Paper Nautilus (1987; new edition, 2006) and Rowena's Field (1984), two collections of short stories, The Possession of Amber (1980) and Feathers or Lead (1986), and Chinese Whispers, Cultural Essays published in 1995. Nicholas Jose co-translated The Finish Line by Sang Ye (1994) and The Ape Herd by Mang Ke (included in Poems for the Millennium, 1998). He co-edited Picador New Writing 4 (1997). His play, Dead City, was performed at Belvoir Street Theatre and the Q Theatre, Penrith in 1994. He acted as curatorial advisor to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney on the exhibitions Mao Goes Pop (1993) and co-edited Arttaiwan (1995).
Margo Lanagan NSW
Margo Lanagan is an Australian writer of short stories and young adult fiction. Recently, several of her books have attracted worldwide attention. Her short story collection Black Juice won two World Fantasy Awards. It was published in Australia by Allen & Unwin in 2004, and in North America by HarperCollins in 2005. It includes the much-anthologized short story "Singing My Sister Down". Her short story collection White Time originally published in Australia by Allen & Unwin in 2000, was published in North America by HarperCollins in August 2006, after the success of Black Juice. A third collection Red Spikes is now available.
Fay Zwicky WA
Fay Zwicky was a Senior Lecturer in English literature at the University of Western Australia. She now devotes her time entirely to writing. She has received many literary awards for her writing, including the 1982 NSW Premier’s Award for Poetry for Kaddish and Other Poems (UQP, 1982), and the 1991 Western Australian Premier’s Award for Poetry for Ask Me (UQP, 1990). In 1993 she published the collection Fay Zwicky: Poems 1970–1992 (UQP, 1993). In 2005, she was awarded the Patrick White Award and the FAW Christopher Brennan Award, and was made a State Living Treasure of Western Australia in 2004. Her most recent collection, Picnic, was published in 2006 and in 2007 she was awarded the New South Wales Premier's Award for Poetry.