After being caught in a desert sandstorm, harassed by monkeys and thrown in jail twice, Deborah Abela decided to write a series of books about a young girl who goes on adventures just like she did. Armed with great gadgets, Max Remy, and her cute spy partner, Linden, are superspies who save the world from bad guys. Deb has also created the Jasper Zammit (Soccer Legend) series with legendary Johnny Warren and The Remarkable Secret of Aurelie Bonhoffen, which was inspired by her nanna’s stories about ghosts. Her latest book is Grimsdon: The Children of the Floods, which is about a flooded city, a bunch of lost children, flying machines and sea monsters.
www.deborahabela.com

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) released in Australia and the US, and his illustrated series, Nit Boy (Laguna Bay Publishing), about everybody's favourite mini-beasts. Nit Boy is currently being developed for television. Tristan's Young Adult novel, it's yr life (Random House) was co-written via email between Byron Bay and Los Angeles with actress/author, Tempany Deckert. Tristan's drive is to tell inspiring, fast-moving stories for young people.
www.tristanbancks.com

Katherine Battersby is a children’s writer and illustrator whose first picture book, Squish Rabbit, will be published by Viking (Penguin US) in 2011. She has had many short stories published in The School Magazine and anthologies such as Short and Scary. Katherine recently won an Australian Society of Authors’ mentorship to develop a junior fantasy novel called The Black Luck Stone. She grew up on the beach in Mackay and was lucky enough to have enthusiastic teachers who encouraged her love of art and literature. She adores reading, rabbits and anime, and thinks exclamation marks are evil.
www.katherinebattersby.com

Carrie Cox is a senior journalist and freelance writer of 18 years' experience. Her career has spanned national magazines and newspapers including The Sunday Telegraph, TV Week, Practical Parenting, Woman's Day, Bride to Be and 25 Beautiful Homes. Carrie has also worked in the fields of corporate communications and public relations, tackling jobs as diverse as writing a safety plan for a uranium mine (for which she harnessed many years of Simpsons viewing) and discussing childbirth live on air with Kerri-Anne Kennerley. Carrie published a book, You Take the High Road and I’ll Take the Bus, in 2005 and her poetry has been included in the coffee-table works of acclaimed outback photographer Mark Coombe. She has penned a weekly column, Carrie On, for ten years, which now appears in five Australian newspapers. Mainly, though, she does a spectacularly messy job of raising three children.

John Danalis is a writer, illustrator and designer. He is the author and illustrator of three children’s titles, Dog 37, Bath Monster and Uncle Lou’s Tattoos. He has illustrated numerous other titles including Licking Lizards, Girl in the Cave and Loku and the Shark Attack. John began his art practice as a graphic designer and now runs a studio called Peripheral Vision with his partner, acclaimed illustrator Stella Danalis. Mixing humour with creative and technical insights gleaned from his experiences as a published author/illustrator and book designer, John’s love of the story is infectious and inspiring. His latest books include a picture book with Stella Danalis, Schuman the Shoeman (2008) and his non-fiction work, Riding the Black Cockatoo, an evocative story of the power of true reconciliation.
www.allenandunwin.com

Peter FitzSimons is a journalist with the Sydney Morning Herald and Sun-Herald and has interviewed everyone from President George Bush Snr to Sir Edmund Hillary to every Australian Prime Minister since Gough Whitlam. He is also a popular after-dinner speaker and the only Wallaby sent from the field against the All Blacks — unjustly, he swears. Peter is the author of twenty books — including biographies of Nancy Wake, Kim Beazley, Nick Farr-Jones, Steve Waugh, Les Darcy and John Eales — and was Australia’s bestselling non-fiction writer in 2001 and 2004. He is the author of the number-one best-selling military history books, Kokoda and Tobruk. He lives in Sydney with his wife Lisa Wilkinson and their three children.
www.harpercollins.com.au

Jackie French is a writer and wombat negotiator from the Araluen Valley. Her writing career spans 20 years, 148 wombats, 135 books in 24 languages, 3,721 bush rats and over 60 awards in Australia and overseas. Jackie is one of the few writers to win both literary and children's choice awards. Her most recent book is The Tomorrow Book, illustrated by Sue deGennaro, which shows that tomorrow can be wonderful, not depressing, as well as A Rose for the Anzac Boys, Hitler’s Daughter, The Night They Stormed Eureka and Baby Wombat’s Week, the long awaited sequel to Diary of a Wombat. Jackie is a passionate advocate for a new look at children's literacy, and a committed historian and ecologist.
www.jackiefrench.com

A live hybrid of performance poetry, spoken word theatre, soundscapes and surrealist vaudeville, Ghostboy has been a feature at many festivals both in solo mode and with his muses – Brisbane 5 piece band Golden Virtues - including the Brisbane Writers Festival, Sydney Writers Festival, Brisbane Cabaret Festival, Byron Writers Festival, Voices on the Coast, Woodford Folk Festival, and NightWords at the Sydney Opera House as well performing on ABC and Triple J radio. Ghostboy won the Nimbin Performance Poetry World Cup (2005), establishing him as one of Australia’s most innovative performance poets. He has operated as QLD’s “slammaster” since 2005 coordinating the QLD leg of the Australian Poetry Slam (06-08) and creating the WordFood slam and spoken word showcase held at the Woodford Folk Festival.
www.myspace.com/holyghostboy

Gus Gordon is an illustrator/author based on the northern beaches of Sydney. He grew up in northern NSW and, after leaving school, worked on cattle stations all over Australia before deciding to draw. Gus moved to Sydney and studied at the Julian Ashton School of Art while drawing cartoons for a variety of magazines and newspapers. Gus has since illustrated over 60 children's books, the latest of which are The Undys series by Michael Wagner, The Adventures of Danny by Pat Flynn, and A Home For Gnomes by Margaret Clark. Gus illustrated James Roy’s acclaimed teenage boy book, The S Word. Gus is also author and illustrator of A Day with Noodles (Puffin Baby) and Wendy (2009, Puffin Books). In 2010 he will illustrate Jen Storer’s new book, Haggis McGregor and the Night of the Skull Moon.
www.gusgordon.com

Jackie French’s Hitler’s Daughter was adapted for the stage by Monkey Baa. Monkey Baa is a dynamic and professional theatre company from Sydney which aims to develop Australian theatre of relevance, uniqueness and vitality. Whitsunday Voices Youth Literature Festival is pleased to welcome this student production of Hitler’s Daughter which offers young people the opportunity to experience the power of theatre.

The play begins with four Australian children caught in the rain by a country road, telling stories while they wait for their school bus. One of the children, Anna, takes her friends on a journey in time, back to war-torn Germany. She creates the tale of a young girl, Heidi, the disfigured daughter of Adolf Hitler. Caught in the turmoil of war, Heidi is shamefully hidden away by her father, one of the most dreaded men in history. As the children intently follow Anna’s story of Heidi, they ask important questions about society’s prejudices and begin to better understand the world they live in.

Phillipa Deanne Martin lives in Melbourne and developed a passion for crime fiction and storytelling at an early age. This interest was reinforced with a Bachelor of Behavioural Sciences (psychology and criminology) and a Postgraduate Certificate in Professional Writing. She is the author of five novels featuring Aussie FBI profiler Sophie Anderson. The first in the Sophie Anderson series, Body Count, was inspired by a nightmare that haunted Phillipa for years. The other books in the series are The Murderers’ Club, Fan Mail, The Killing Hands and Kiss of Death. Her books have been published in the US, UK, Germany, France, Sweden, Canada, Ireland and New Zealand.
www.pdmartin.com.au

Ruben Meerman is the ‘Surfing Scientist’. Well known to budding young scientists through his appearances on ABC’s “Rollercoaster” and “The ExperiMENTALs” this science aficionado also has an ABC website packed with resources for teachers and kids. Ruben's scientific career started as a physicist working in the laser industry but he soon escaped the lab to start performing his brand of cheeky science shows at schools and public events. With eye-popping demonstrations and lightning wit, Ruben engages audiences with an 'infectious' passion and enthusiasm. Ruben has published three great books, Surfing Scientist – 40 Cool Science Tricks, Surfing Scientist Book 2: DIY Science Gizmos and 40 Super Human Body Tricks and a fourth book on the way!
http://www.abc.net.au/science/surfingscientist/

Photo supplied courtesy of Steve Baccon

James Roy was born in country NSW in 1968, and grew up in Papua New Guinea and Fiji. He fell in love with books and stories at a young age, and couldn't wait until he was old enough to write his own. Now, when he's not writing award-winning books like Captain Mack and Billy Mack's War, he's travelling all over the place talking to young people about the joys of being a writer. He lives with his family in the Blue Mountains, and enjoys playing the handmade guitar his dad made for him. Recent books include the award winning Town (2008) and Hunting Elephants (2008). His latest releases for 2010 include Edsel Grizzler: Rescue Mission and a novel for teens, Anonymity Jones.
www.jamesroy.com.au

Michael Wagner is a popular children’s author whose best-known books follow the wacky and action-packed sporting adventures of Maxx Rumble, and the comically intense father-son rivalries of The Undys. Prior to becoming a children’s author, Michael played in a band that almost became famous, spent ten years working as a radio broadcaster with the ABC, wrote and produced award-winning animation for television, and wrote and performed comedy. Watch for Michael’s new novel, Destiny’s Right Hand, coming in May 2010.
www.michaelwagner.com.au