Short-listed Writers Draw On A Range Of Backgrounds

Sydney Morning Herald

Friday July 8, 1994

MARY ANNE BAARTZ is the mother of four and grandmother of three. She is married to Michael Baartz, a printmaker. They live by a creek in a rainforest of northern NSW in a "tree house" built by Michael. When Mary Anne was five, her family moved to Cloncurry in north-west Queensland. Her experiences there inspired The Haymaker.

HELEN BARNES was born in 1966 in Leeton, in western NSW. She lived in Melbourne for about seven years, finished school at MacRobertson Girls' High and then worked as a factory hand, artists' model, housemaid, dishwasher, bookkeeper and barmaid. She works now in an advertising agency in North Sydney. She is married to a Buddhist break who plays the trombone and she is learning to play the tuba.

LES HARROP grew up in a Lancashire cotton town and was educated at London University. He was a postgraduate scholar at King's College, Cambridge, at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia and at the Australian National University. He wrote his doctoral thesis at the University of Melbourne. He now lives in Melbourne. He was founding editor of the journal Helix. Knight Galah is his first venture in prose fiction. He has taught literature for some years, at Melbourne University, University of California and the Central University of Iowa. He makes his living now as a freelance lecturer and editor. He is convener of the Melbourne Writers' Group.

KIM KILVINGTON was born in Brisbane in 1957, third of four sons. He received his Christian name from his mother whose reading of Rudyard Kipling's Kim was rudely interrupted by his birth. He received his surname from his father, Patrick, a highly successful artist and World War II hero. The author's childhood was spent at Surfers Paradise which was then a small town of fibro houses, broad, almost empty beaches and a sea full of fish. When he was 26 he obtained an Honour's Degree in Law, was promptly admitted to the Queensland Bar and has practised as a lawyer, mostly as a barrister, off and on, ever since. The author recently left Alice Springs where he was working for the Aboriginal Legal Aid Service, and is now living in Darwin.

EDEN LIDDELOW taught English and French in Melbourne secondary schools before going to London where she taught English as a foreign language and worked as a research assistant at the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations. When she returned to Australia she lectured in English and applied linguistics at RMIT, finished a PhD in literature and linguistics and taught literature at Melbourne and Deakin universities. She has had articles published in various literary journals and newspapers. She lives in the Melbourne seaside suburb of St Kilda and travels regularly to England and to France where, with a group of friends, she recently bought a house.

GARRY SATHERLEY was born in New Zealand in 1940 but has lived in Australia for 30 years, at present on NSW's Central Coast. He is a senior sub-editor on the Herald and has also worked as a wharf labourer, fruit picker, sawmill hand, steelworks' tallyman, train oiler, builder's labourer and in fruit canneries and a sausage factory. He enjoys reading, bushwalking and sailing and was engineer and mate on an expedition to Antarctica. A formative influence in the development of his novel, Kukac's Window, was a seven-month spell in Hungary at the time of democratisation. He is married and has three children.

BEN WINCH is 20 years old and lives in the Adelaide Hills. A seasoned short-story writer, he has been given grants from the SA Department for the Arts and Cultural Development and the SA Youth Arts Board, to aid in the writing of his first novel, Liadhen. He is also one of three, first-heat winners in The Weekend Australian's Young Travel Writer of the Year competition. He is working on his second novel and a number of travel articles and short stories.

© 1994 Sydney Morning Herald

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