Anne Aly was born in Egypt and immigrated to Australia at the age of two. She is an Australian politician, political scholar, academic and counterterrorism expert. She was appointed associate professor at Curtin in 2014, and then professor at Edith Cowan in 2015, and has been the Federal Member for Cowan since July 2016. Anne is the author of Terrorism and Global Security: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives and has written extensively about terrorism, counterterrorism and radicalisation. The essay in this collection is an extract from Anne’s forthcoming memoir to be published by ABC Books in 2018.
Tracey Arnich is the eldest of four children. She is fifty-two years old, and the single mother of two children. She grew up in Tasmania but now resides in Perth, Western Australia. Her past careers have been included running nightclubs, valuing and cataloguing militaria, antiques, veteran vintage and classic motorcycles. Her present careers are fortune-telling and floristry. Tracey’s hobbies are art, music, cooking and reading. She loves spending time with her family and friends.
Liz Byrski is the author of a number of non-fiction books including Remember Me, Getting On: Some Thoughts on Women and Ageing, and In Love and War: Nursing Heroes, as well as nine novels including The Woman Next Door and Family Secrets. She has worked as a freelance journalist, a broadcaster with ABC radio and as an advisor to a minister in the Western Australian Government. Liz is an Associate Professor in the School of Media, Culture and Creative Arts at Curtin University.
Sarah Drummond writes novels, short fiction, memoir and essays, and has been shortlisted for various Australian literary awards. She holds a PhD in history, and her work is imbued with character and a sense of place. She is the author of a non-fiction book, Salt Story: Of Sea-Dogs and Fisherwomen and a novel, The Sound (Fremantle Press, 2013 and 2016).
Dr Mehreen Faruqi joined the NSW Legislative Council in June 2013 and is the first Muslim woman elected to any parliament in Australia. Prior to this she was the director of the Institute of Environmental Studies at the University of NSW and an associate professor in business and sustainability. She is a civil and environmental engineer with twenty-five years experience working in local government, multinational consulting firms and academia. Since migrating from Pakistan to Australia in 1992 with her young family, she has worked across NSW with a focus on gender equality, inclusiveness and social justice. She is passionate about amplifying community voices on climate change action, environmental protection, and closing the gap on inequality.
Goldie Goldbloom lives in Chicago with her eight children. Her short fiction has appeared in many journals, including Ploughshares, The Kenyon Review, Meanjin and Prairie Schooner, and has been translated into more than ten languages. Her first novel, The Paperbark Shoe, won the US Association of Writers and Writing Programs’ Novel Award, as well as being named Foreword Indies Book of the Year for Literary Fiction (published in the US as Toads’ Museum of Freaks and Wonders). Goldie is the author of a collection of short stories, You Lose These, and a second novel, Gwen. She teaches at Northwestern University and the University of Chicago.
Krissy Kneen is the award-winning author of the memoir Affection, the novels Steeplechase, Triptych, The Adventures of Holly White and the Incredible Sex Machine, An Uncertain Grace, and the Thomas Shapcott Award-winning poetry collection Eating My Grandmother. She recently won the Griffith Review Novella Project prize and an Australia Council fellowship. She has written and directed documentaries for SBS and ABC television.
Jeanine Leane is a Wiradjuri writer. She lectures at the University of Melbourne on creative writing and Aboriginal literature. Her novel, Purple Threads, won the David Unaipon Award in the 2010 Queensland Premier’s Literary Awards, and was published by UQP. It was subsequently shortlisted for the 2012 Commonwealth Book Prize. Her book of poetry, Dark Secrets, won the 2010 Scanlon Prize for Indigenous Poetry. In 2017, she won two national poetry prizes: the Oodgeroo Noonucal Prize (co-winner) and the University of Canberra Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Poetry Prize. Her second poetry collection Walk Back Over was published in 2017 and she has just competed her second novel. Jeanine has also published widely in the area of Aboriginal literature and cultural appropriation.
Brigid Lowry has a master of arts in creative writing, and has published both poetry and short fiction for adults, as well as eight books for teenagers. Guitar Highway Rose and Juicy Writing: Inspiration and Techniques for Young Writers are two of her prize-winning YA titles. Her latest book is Still Life With Teapot: On Zen, Writing and Creativity (Fremantle Press, 2016). Brigid is a Zen student who believes in op shops, coloured pencils, vegetables, oceans, cake, floral frocks, postcards, and fostering joy and creativity in herself and others.
Pam Menzies is a passionate activist who organised her first protest at the age of seventy. As a younger person, she did everything to escape country life on the South Coast of NSW. Now older, she spends as much time as possible on a bushy block of land in the Southern Tablelands. An earlier version of this piece was published in Overland in 2016.
Jodie Moffat commenced her law degree the year she turned forty and graduated as a Juris Doctor at the age of forty-four. Her paper, ‘Arranging Deckchairs on the Titanic’, won the Morella Calder Memorial Prize in 2010, and was published in the Australian & New Zealand Maritime Law Journal that year. Jodie spent five years as a commercial litigator in the Perth CBD before taking up practice as a generalist solicitor with a community legal service in 2017. She ran as the Greens Party lower house candidate in her hometown of Mandurah in the 2017 state election.
Charlotte Roseby is a writer, editor and documentary film-maker. She works as a copywriter, getting in deep with a range of technical subjects. Charlotte’s first film Still Breathing, seen on SBS TV, documents her friend Rob’s moment of truth as he faces the decision to have a lung transplant. Her second film, In the End, featured on ABC TV’s Compass program. It explores the consequences of modern medical advances in intensive care that are prolonging elderly patients’ lives, when they are already well along the path of dying.
Maria Scoda is an experienced clinical and consult ant psychologist who works in private practice in the Sydney CBD. She earned her doctorate in clinical psychology from the Australian National University in 2002. She also holds a bachelor of arts, with honours in psychology. In addition to her clinical work, Maria assists business executives to understand and manage complex relationship dynamics for better interpersonal relationships in the workplace and at home. She is regularly contacted by the media for professional commentary and opinion on psychological issues, such as relationships, anxiety and depression.
Jenny Smithson is a Commissioner of the NSW Land and Environment Court and a qualified town planner, being a Life Fellow and former state president and national councillor of the Planning Institute of Australia. She is a former senior principal of international consulting firm Cardno. She is a graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors and a former director of BSD Consultants, Cardno (WA), and LandCorp. Jenny was appointed by the WA Government as a commissioner to the Shire of Albany and to the City of Cockburn Councils. In 1996 she was a finalist for the WA Citizen of the Year for her contribution to the planning profession.
Susan Laura Sullivan writes fiction, essays and poetry. Her work has been published in Westerly: New Creative, Plumwood Journal, and The Font: A Literary Journal for Language Teachers, among others. She holds a master of creative arts, and has taught creative writing at Curtin University and to the general community. She was shortlisted for the T.A.G. Hungerford Award in 2012, and currently lives in Japan, where she teaches English.
Pat Mamanyjun Torres is an Australian First Peoples woman. Her ancestors are traditional owners of Djugun, Yawuru, Garajarri, Nyul-Nyul, Jabirr-Jabirr and Bardi lands in the areas around Broome, WA. Pat is passionate about the development of the Australian wild/native foods industry and its holistic engagement with Indigenous people, and she is committed to the ‘good, clean and fair’ Slow Food ethos for native foods in her region. She is a published author and illustrator, whose work has appeared in Kimberley Stories (Fremantle Press, 2012).