Tristan Bancks tells stories for the page and screen. He has a background as an actor and television presenter in Australia and the UK. His short films have won a number of awards and have screened widely in festivals and on TV. Tristan has written several books for kids and teens, including the explosive Mac Slater, Coolhunter series (Random House Australia, Simon & Schuster US) and his new illustrated series, Nitboy (Laguna Bay Publishing), about everybody's favourite mini-beasts. Nitboy is currently being developed for television. Tristan's new Young Adult novel, it's yr life (Random House) was co-written with actress / author, Tempany Deckert. Tristan's drive is to tell inspiring, fast-moving stories.

Described as ‘Australia’s best known academic’ by national radio and a ‘celebrity academic’ by other media, Karen has also had the (mis)fortune to earn other, less salubrious appellations. Called everything from a ‘six two transvestite Sheila’ by former football great on national TV, ‘the grunge queen’, a ‘witch’ by a local pastor, and a ‘left-wing loopy academic with no testosterone’ by an irate radio listener in Tasmania, and, most recently, a crusading, sycophantic, pedantic and myopic academic dwelling in an ivory tower, by a reader of her columns, Dr Karen Brooks is, to say the least, polemical. Karen was a professional actress for over 18 years, a children’s playwright and an Army Officer in the Royal Australian Army as well as a checkout-‘chick’, a waitress, a dress-boutique manager, a theatre director, a wife (twice) and mother (twice over too!). She is currently an Associate Professor of Media Studies at Southern Cross University in Lismore NSW and a columnist with Queensland’s leading newspaper, The Courier Mail as well as a feature writer for the Australia-wide Copeland publishing series of parenting magazines.

Carl Cleves, author, modern troubadour, ethnomusicologist and global citizen was born in the Flemish part of Belgium. Of his first book, Tarab: Travels with my guitar. Bruce Elder (SMH) writes: ‘Cleves deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as Thesiger, Burton and Newby. He is a true traveller in an age of holidaymakers and gawpers.’ From the Sudan to Australia, Tarab is an epic, mesmerizing tale of high adventure and the search for meaning of a guitar-toting minstrel in his roles as young beat poet, law student, single father, ethnomusicologist, relief worker in India and recording star in Brazil. It is the story of an artist’s quest for Tarab: a place where music and poetry bestow true bliss upon the lucky one. It’s by turns philosophical, funny, adventurous and insightful.

Alan Close is the author of Before You Met Me: A Memoir Of One Man’s Troubled Search For Love. Over a twenty-five year writing career, he has written extensively on men and relationships in fiction, poetry and creative non-fiction. His first book, The Romance Of The Season told of the three-way relationship between a single mother, her lover and young daughter. The Australian Love Letters of Raymond Chandler dramatised the true story of a young college girl in 1950s rural NSW and her intimate correspondence with the famous California crime writer. He edited the anthology Men Love Sex, a collection of stories by men about love, sex and relationships and has been a regular feature writer and essayist in the national print media and was a columnist on men's issues in Good Weekend magazine. He has taught creative writing at Qld University of Technology and Southern Cross University and with his partner Sarah Armstrong runs writing and yoga retreats in Bali.