Keynote Speakers

        Professor Brenda Walker

Professor Brenda Walker has written four novels, the most recent of which, The Wing of Night, won the 2006 Nita.B. Kibble Award and the 2007 Asher Award, and was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award. She is Winthrop Professor of English and Cultural Studies at the University of Western Australia.

Andrew Cowan is the Director of the MA in Creative Writing (Prose Fiction) at the University of East Anglia, UK, and the author of four novels, including PIG, which was longlisted for the Booker Prize and won the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award among several other literary prizes. COMMON GROUND and CRUSTACEANS both received competitive Arts Council bursaries. WHAT I KNOW was the recipient of an Arts Council Writers' Award. THE ART OF WRITING FICTION will be published by Pearson Longman in spring 2011.

          Andrew Cowan

                  Jonathan Holmes

Jonathan studied at Monash University and the University of Tasmania. He was appointed to the Tasmanian School of Art at the Tasmanian College of Advanced Education in 1973 and remained a member of staff when the School became a faculty of the University of Tasmania. He was a member of the Visual Arts Board of the Australia Council from 1978 through to 1982 and was a Trustee of the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery from 1990 until the end of 1993. Jonathan has been Deputy Head of the Tasmanian School of Art for several terms and is concluding a five year term as Associate Dean of Teaching and Learning with the Faculty of Arts, UTAS. In 2010 he will be Creative Arts Discipline Scholar with the Australian Learning and Teaching Council, based at the Tasmanian School of Art. 

Shane Maloney
Shane Maloney is the creator of the Murray Whelan novels: Stiff, The Brush-Off, Nice Try, The Big Ask, Something Fishy and Sucked In. The Brush-Off won the Ned Kelly Prize for Crime Fiction in 1996 and was shortlisted for the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award. Nice Try was shortlisted for the Age Book of the Year in 2000, as was Sucked In in 2007. In 2004, Stiff and The Brush-Off were made into movies with David Wenham starring as Murray Whelan.

                         Shane Maloney

CULTURAL EVENTS AND PANELS

The Writer in residence in the Academy This session will feature an in-conversation with RMIT University's writers in residence 2010 - 2011 who include Drusilla Modjeska, Chloe Hooper, Nam Le, Ana Kokkinos, Robert Dessaix.

Melbourne City of Literature The role of the Academy in a City of Literature

Crime, Criminality and the City On why Melbourne does such good Crime Fiction