The The NSW Writers' Centre

Mentors – Non-fiction

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.

Brian Cook owns and operates the Manuscript Appraisal Agency. He has been involved in publishing for over 33 years and much of that time has been spent with a focus on books for children and young people. As Children’s Publisher at HarperCollins he led the development of the HarperCollins children’s list. He has had years of experience in the international market place in sales and acquisition of both adult and children’s books.

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 non-fiction, she has worked with subject matter ranging from popular presentation of scientific material to history, health, self-help, memoir, and business.

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

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.

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.

Sylvia Martin is the author of two biographies, Passionate Friends: Mary Fullerton, Mabel Singleton and Miles Franklin (2001), which was shortlisted for the Independent Scholars’ Association Book Prize (2002), and Ida Leeson: A Life (2006). She has also published autobiographical essays and academic articles in journals such as Meanjin, Women’s History Review, Hecate and Life Writing. An experienced manuscript assessor of non-fiction and fiction for a major assessment service, she holds a PhD in Women’s Studies/Historical and Cultural Studies and has supervised and examined theses containing creative writing elements. An undergraduate unit she designed on Auto/biography is offered in the writing program at Southern Cross University. Her particular interests are Australian literature and the history of sexuality. Preferred genres: non-fiction, especially women’s autobiography, biography and memoir.

Peter Meredith has been editing and writing non-fiction professionally for more than 35 years. As a journalist he worked on the staff of Australian, British and Southern African newspapers and magazines, both writing and editing. The books he has authored include Myles and Milo (a biography, published by Allen & Unwin in 1999), which received an honourable mention in Centre for Australian Cultural Studies Centre awards in 1999), two travel books, several corporate histories and a ghostwritten travel/adventure book, Two Below Zero (published by Australian Geographic in 1996). The books he has edited include: Extreme South (true-life adventure, published by Australian Geographic, 2000); Going Home: Families Living with Alzheimer’s (medical, published 2000); Palms in Australia (horticulture, published by Reed Books, 1996); Freshwater Fishes of S-E Australia (biology, published by Reed Books, 1996).

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

Mark Mordue was awarded a 1992 Human Rights Media Award for his journalism and was founding editor of Australian Style 1992-97. His work is published internationally. He was the 2001 Asialink writer-in-residence at Beijing University and is the best-selling author of Dastgah: Diary of a Headtrip, first published in Australia by Allen & Unwin in 2001 and released in the USA through Hawthorne Books. Mark teaches Creative Non-Fiction and Narrative Writing at the University of Technology, Sydney. Preferred genres: non-fiction, literary travel, pop culture, new journalism, biography/memoir.

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.