Mentorships: Memoir
Back to all mentorshipsFiona Kelly McGregor
Fiona Kelly McGregor is a writer, artist, critic, teacher and mentor with over thirty years’ experience. McGregor has published eight books and won a variety of awards, including The Age Book of the Year for Indelible Ink, a Queensland Literary Award (Steel Rudd) for short story collection Suck my Toes and the Woollahra Digital Literary Award for essay ‘The Hot Desk’. Recent nominations include the Miles Franklin, the NSW Premiers’ Award, and the Stella Prize for the novel Iris. McGregor has conducted seminars at universities and given lectures internationally on topics pertaining to writing, performance art, urban histories, memoir, street life, activism, LGBTIQ culture and politics, and more. McGregor has taught a range of creative writing subjects including fiction both long and short, narrative non-fiction, and arts and music criticism. McGregor has also taught English as a second language and mentored extensively, with several mentees progressing to publication and being shortlisted for awards. McGregor is based in Sydney, on unceded Gadigal land. Web: fionakmcgregor.com Instagram: Fiona Kelly McGregor
Ashley Kalagian Blunt
Ashley Kalagian Blunt is the author of How to Be Australian, a memoir; and My Name Is Revenge, a collection of fiction and essays, and a finalist in the 2018 Carmel Bird Digital Literary Award. Her writing appears in Australian Book Review, Overland, Griffith Review, Sydney Review of Books, the Sydney Morning Herald, Kill Your Darlings and more. She co-hosts James and Ashley Stay at Home, a podcast about writing, creativity and health, and loves helping writers learn practical skills and develop deeper insights into the craft of writing.
Personal website: https://ashleykalagianblunt.com
Mireille Juchau
Mireille Juchau is a novelist, essayist and critic. Her third novel, The World Without Us, won the 2016 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award. Her essays, reviews and short fiction are widely published, most recently in The Monthly, newyorker.com, Tablet, Sydney Review of Books, Best Australian Essays and LA Review of Books. She has taught at several universities and in the community and has a PhD in literature. Mireille has also worked as an editor, at HEAT Magazine, RealTime and on several other publications.
Personal website: www.mireillejuchau.com
Lliane Clarke
Lliane Clarke is an experienced publisher, writer, ghost-writer, editor and journalist with over 20 years of experience in publishing in print and online. She has a passion for story-telling and helping writers to bring to life the stories they want to tell.
Lliane has managed major authors across a variety of genres from biography, cookery and crime and has commissioned titles for markets in Australia and the UK. She has written and created trade and custom publishing titles for companies such as New Hobsons Press, New Holland Publishers International, Bauer Media Books, Emap Media Magazines and others. She runs non-fiction manuscript assessment sessions for Writing NSW and presents non-fiction titles on behalf of authors to publishers such as Hardie Grant, Allen and Unwin/Murdoch, Random House Penguin and New Holland Publishers amongst others. Lliane is also an experienced communications professional with extensive experience in developing publicity campaigns. Personal website: www.contentandculturalprojects.wordpress.com
Diana Giese
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. A recent mentoree placed his first book with a major international publisher. Diana will help you produce memoirs, fiction and history. Diana’s personal website: https://www.dianagieseeditorial.com.au
Stuart MacDonald
Guiding authors through the creative writing process and through the publishing/sales/marketing process is something Stuart MacDonald has been doing for several decades. His broad experience of manuscript assessment, and of assisting, mentoring and motivating writers and students of creative writing, ranges from business books, self-help and autobiography to romance, serious fiction and poetry. Stuart’s background in publishing management includes directorships with a number of publishers including HarperCollins, Woodslane, Harlequin and Dorling Kindersley. He has spoken at numerous conferences here and overseas, and has lectured for a number of publishing organisations and educational institutions including the Australian Publishers Association and Macquarie University.
Craig Munro
Craig Munro is a biographer, book historian and publishing editor as well as the founding chair of the Queensland Writers Centre. His award-winning biography Wild Man of Letters: The Story of P.R. Stephensen was published to wide acclaim. He was UQP fiction editor (1973-80) and then publishing manager (1983 to 2000). As an editor of both fiction and non-fiction, Craig Munro has worked with a diverse range of writers including Peter Carey, David Malouf, Olga Masters, Murray Bail, Roger McDonald, Barbara Hanrahan, Nicholas Jose, Ross Fitzgerald and Donald Horne. In 1985 he won the Barbara Ramsden Award for Editing and in 2010 the Johnno Award for his contribution to writing. He was awarded a Literature Board writing grant in 2010 and recently completed a publishing memoir Editor at Large. He is currently working on Under Cover, a collection of profiles of Australian book editors, and on a biography of critic and publisher AG Stephens (1865–1933). In his role as UQP publishing manager, Craig Munro was responsible for staff training and mentoring younger editors and was invited by the Queensland Society of Editors to take part in the society’s CAL-funded editorial mentoring project (2008–10).