Writers - Outback Writers Festival

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Writers

Last Year > 2018
We are very pleased to have the following authors confirmed for 2018. We are currently accepting interest from all outback writers to attend the 2018 Festival. Please email your details to winton@outbackwritersfestival.com.au.
Bronwyn Blake
I have lived most of my life in Victoria, however for the past three years, I have lived in Far North Queensland, at Mount Isa, Cairns and Townsville. While in Mt Isa, through my partner’s work with RFDS, I met women from Gregory Downs and the wider the Gulf of Carpentaria region. This growing relationship resulted in the development, editing and publication of the current best-selling anthology, ‘Gulf Women, Voices from Remote North West Queensland.’
I’ve loved this project, not only because it displays the little-known Gulf region in all its temperamental aspects, but because of the amazing and wonderful women who live there and with whom I was lucky enough to work.
 
I have thirteen published books, mostly for Young Adult, but have also written for adults, as well as several award winning short stories.  Four of my YA books were chosen as Children’s Book Council of Australia Notable Books.
Many of my older readers YA books are set in rural or remote Australia, reflecting my love of the wilder parts of this country. They are about our more inaccessible areas, those environments, the hardships, the joys and challenges of living in those regions, and the resilience of its young people.  
Kim Mahood
Kim Mahood is a writer and artist based near Canberra. She grew up in Central Australia and the Tanami Desert, and maintains strong connections with the Aboriginal traditional owners and families of the stockmen who worked with her family.  She visits the Tanami every year, working on art, mapping and environmental projects with the Aboriginal custodians.

Her latest book, Position Doubtful, (Scribe 2016) documents this experience, exploring the relationships between Aboriginal and settler Australians, and between people, art and country. It follows on from her memoir, Craft for a Dry Lake, (Random House 2000), which won The Age Book of the Year for non-fiction and the NSW Premier’s Award.

Position Doubtful has been shortlisted for the Victorian Premier’s Awards, the Australian Book Industry Awards, the National Biography Award, the Queensland Literary Awards, and the Council for the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences.
Her essays have been published in art, literary and public affairs journals. The essay Kartiya are like Toyotas – white workers on Australia’s cultural frontier, has become a standard text for the induction of newcomers working in remote Aboriginal communities.
She co-edited the book Desert Lake: art, science and stories from Paruku, (CSIRO 2013), and was awarded the 2013 Peter Blazey Fellowship, and the 2014 HC Coombs Creative Arts Fellowship.

Her art practice explores the interface between Aboriginal and western representations of landscape/country, and includes collaborations with the Walmajarri painter Veronica Lulu, and artist/photographer the late Pamela Lofts. These collaborations explore the complexities and differences between embodied and mediated art practices.

Her artwork is held in state, territory and regional collections.
Scott Whittaker
Scott Whitaker grew up in Melbourne in the 1960s and 1970s before being transferred to Queensland with his employer Airservices, then Department of Aviation. After working in Air Traffic Control for over 30 years, he retired a few years ago. Scott returned to Melbourne but has recently returned to QLD to soak up the sunshine at Bowen (northern region of the Whitsundays). He has two adult children.

His interests include railways, probably kindled by the stories told by his grandfather who was a locomotive fireman on steam engines during the Second World War, Australian history and travel. It is these interests that Scott collectively seized upon at retirement as he entered the world of authorship, travelling around Australia, to explore the history of the Railway Hotels of Australia.
 
Tim Borthwick
Harper Collins author, Tim Borthwick is a Bronze Swagman Award-winning writer of original bush poetry. From a young age he loved to read the poems of Banjo Peterson and Henry Lawson, captivated by their ability to tell a story through rhyme and rhythm. Born on a sheep and cattle station in western Queensland, Tim has spent most of his life on the land, and has a great love for the people and stories of the Australian outback. Tim lives in Toowoomba, Queensland, and gets out to the bush whenever he can. 
Errol Bishop
Errol Bishop is a Queenslander, born in 1946 and educated in Toowoomba. For some years he worked as a printer in various locations in Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and New Zealand. Entering college in 1977, he later graduated as a teacher. In 1980 he wed Karen, also a teacher. They taught from the tip of Cape York to the Queensland–New South Wales border. Their children, Amanda and Greg, came along in 1987 and 1989 respectively. Errol retired when Principal of Macleay Island School in Moreton Bay. It was there that he first heard the legend of the Stradbroke galleon, which inspired this book.

Errol and Karen now live in Queensland’s South Burnett region enjoying semi-retirement and their grandchildren.
Dan Kelly
Dan is the General Manager of Boolarong Press. Boolarong has been publishing great Queensland and Australian stories for over 40 years. It has published over 1,300 titles and has currently over 400 books in print. Boolarong is a sister company to Watson Ferguson & Company which has been printing books since 1868. 

Dan has been runnning both businesses for 15 years and has himself been responsible for commissioning books such as Aboriginal Campsites of Greater Brisbane. The Brisbane River Guide, Outback Miners and the republishing of many of Boolarong's favourite books.
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