The The NSW Writers' Centre

Mentors – Fiction

Greg Bastian is well-establishlished author of young adult novels, an experienced teacher and popular mentor. His manuscript assessments, editors’ reports and mentorships are always comprehensive and can include structural and dramatic elements of a work as well as nitty-gritty style issues such as syntax, voice, setting and punctuation. www.gregbastian.com.au

Greg is available to work in person as well as via email.

Nick Bleszynski has spent 30 years writing/directing award-winning documentary films for the world’s biggest broadcasters. He has written the bestselling Shoot Straight You Bastards, You’ll Never Take Me Alive (shortlisted for the 2006 Ned Kelly True Crime Prize), Bloodlust and is about to publish The Pricker. With a wealth of teaching and mentoring experience (London University, Aberdeen Arts Centre, Sturt University, NSW TAFE, NSW Writers’ Centre and Sutherland & Bankstown Community Colleges), Nick is ideally placed to help aspiring authors realize their true potential. He is comfortable helping writers with modern fiction, non-fiction, speculative fiction and scriptwriting/project proposals, but specialises in books with a historical background, which is the basis of his own projects. www.blackrosemedia.com.au

Nick is available to work in person as well as via phone, email or Skype.

Laura Daniel has been involved in writing, editing, and other aspects of publishing on and off for more than forty years, since 1968, and has worked with a wide variety of material. Writing under various names, she has authored books and articles on history, social and cultural issues, nature, and travel, and has contributed to several encyclopaedias and partworks, writing in a range of genres and on a wide range of subjects including nature, history, philosophy, religion, cooking, and a plethora of trivia. As an editor and mentor in manuscript development, she has worked on both fiction and non-fiction books and magazine articles. In fiction, she has worked across many genres from romance through adventure to religious and philosophical fiction.

Laura is available to work in person as well as via email and Skype.

Kate Forsyth has published more than twenty books for both adult and children, which have been published in thirteen different countries, including Russia, Japan, Italy, Spain, Poland and Indonesia. She has taught creative writing from primary to tertiary levels for over ten years, including ‘Writing for Children’ at Sydney University, and has run writing retreats in Fiji and Greece. She mentors for the ASA Mentorship Program, and for the NSW Writers’ Centre and the Central West Writers’ Group. www.kateforsyth.com.au

Kate is only available to work via email.

Diana Giese has worked for publishers large and small, including Macmillan, Oxford University Press, HarperEducational and Brandl & Schlesinger, in Australia and overseas. She has collaborated with many writers to help them develop their best possible work, and produced and promoted prize-winners and excellent sellers. She is the author of six books, including Astronauts, Lost Souls and Dragons (University of Queensland Press), Beyond Chinatown (National Library of Australia) and A better place to live (Freshwater Bay Press). She has also worked as a literary journalist for major newspapers and ABC radio, and served on writers’ festival and prize committees. Diana is ready to help you write, produce and market memoirs, fiction and history, across a table or via phone and email, from Sydney. www.dianagiese.com.au

Diana is available to work in person as well as via phone or email.

Margaret Hamilton AM has been a librarian, bookseller and publisher. In 1987 she left her position as Publishing Director at Hodder & Stoughton Australia to establish Margaret Hamilton Books, which developed an international reputation for quality children’s books and won many awards, both in Australia and overseas. The company became a division of Scholastic Australia in 1996 and Margaret retired from full-time publishing in 2001. Margaret now provides publishing services on a freelance basis. She also reviews children’s books, conducts consultations and mentorships with authors and illustrators and runs regular courses on Creating Children’s Picture Books at Pinerolo, The Children’s Book Cottage at Blackheath in the Blue Mountains. www.pinerolo.com.au

Margaret is available to work in person as well as via email.

Catherine Hammond earned a Masters Degree in literature and creative writing (Boston) and a MA in philosophy (Fordham, New York), and taught English literature, creative writing and philosophical psychology in both Boston and Sydney, in tertiary institutes. She has authored two high school texts, a book of short stories, a biography and a public speaking aid. She edited and contributed to a breakthrough work entitled, Creation Spirituality and the Dreamtime (Millennium, Sydney). As a free lance editor, she now assesses manuscripts and edits for both publishers and individual writers, and has been a mentor at the NSW Writers’ Centre for several years, also conducting courses at the Centre. Catherine is a frequent speaker at various workshops and writers’ groups, focusing in the past year on opportunities in online and e-publishing.

Catherine is available to work in person as well as via phone, email and Skype.

Joyce Kornblatt has published four novels (Nothing to Do with Love, Breaking Bread, White Water, and The Reason for Wings) in the US, with overseas publications in England, Germany and Denmark. In addition, her short stories, essays and book reviews have appeared in publications such as The Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times, The Washington Post and a number of literary quarterlies. She is currently at work on a new novel, and book of essays about grief. For 25 years, Joyce taught literature and creative writing at undergrad and postgrad levels in the US, where she was a professor at the University of Maryland. She mentors writers, offers workshops and has a small private psychotherapy practice.

Emily Maguire is the author of three novels and two non-fiction books. Her articles and essays have been published widely including in The Monthly, Sunday Life and The Sydney Morning Herald. Emily has been twice highly commended for the Kathleen Mitchell Award for novelists under 30 and was a finalist for the 2006 International Dylan Thomas Prize. In 2010, she was named as a Sydney Morning Herald Young Novelist of the Year. Emily has an MA in literature, teaches creative writing to children and teenagers and frequently mentors beginning and emerging writers. www.emilymaguire.com.au

Emily is available to work in person as well as via phone.

Nicola O’Shea has been working as a book editor in Australian publishing since 1995. She worked in-house at HarperCollins Publishers for many years; and as a freelance editor now works for a range of publishers including HarperCollins, Pan Macmillan, Allen & Unwin, Random House, Hachette Australia. She also teaches editing at UTS and Sydney University. She edits both adult and children’s/YA fiction, as well as narrative non-fiction.

Nicola is available to work in person as well as via phone or email.

Barry Oakley is the author of five novels, including the best selling Salute to the Great McCarthy and the award-winning Let’s Hear It for Prendergast, which won the Captain Cook Bicentenary Prize for Fiction. Walking Through Tigerland, his collection of short stories, has been republished twice. His plays (including The Feet of Daniel Mannix and Bedfellows) helped initiate the beginnings of Australian drama at the Pram Factory, Melbourne, in the 1970s. Barry was Literary Editor of The Australian for 10 years, and Minitudes (his diaries 1974-97) was published in 2001. His last novel Don’t Leave Me was published in 2002 by Text. Barry is an experienced mentor.

Sharon Rundle co-edited Fear Factor: Terror Incognito, Indo-Australian short stories, Picador India (2009) Picador Australia (2010). She co-edited, Peacock Memosaic, a new media collection of stories (2010). Sharon edits the University of Technology Sydney quarterly Journal Writers Connect and is head of the UTS Alumni Writers’ Network. She has published and broadcast stories, essays and articles in Australia and internationally including in: Encounters: Modern Australian Short Stories and Desert in Bloom – Indian Women’s Fiction in English. She is co-author of Round Table Writing and author of Changes & Chances. She is an academic at the University of Technology Sydney and has taught English, Writing and IT subjects for Higher Education institutions in Australia and the UK for eighteen years. She was awarded the 2010 UTS Alumni Award for Excellence; the UTS SMSA Medallion; and a Commonwealth Short Story prize. www.roundtablewriting.com

Sharon is available to work in person as well as via phone or email.

Keith Stevenson has been working as an editor in the speculative fiction genre for ten years, firstly as editor of Australia’s longest running SF and Fantasy Magazine, Aurealis, and more recently as publishing editor with coeur de lion publishing (www.coeurdelion.com.au), a Sydney-based speculative ficition publisher whose publications have won numerous awards and accolades here and overseas. Keith is also a spec fic reviewer and the host and producer of the Parsec Award nominated Terra Incognita Australian Speculative Fiction Podcast (www.tisf.com.au). A published speculative fiction author, Keith brings his critical skills as a publisher editor, reviewer and writer immersed in the SF, Fantasy and Horror genres to the mentorship program. www.keithstevenson.com

Keith is available to work in person as well as via phone, email or Skype.