If I Tell You... I'll Have to Kill You

Michael Robotham was born in Australia in 1960, and grew up in small NSW country towns, until becoming a journalist on a Sydney newspaper. He worked as a journalist in Australia, Europe, Africa and America. In 1993 he quit journalism to become a ghostwriter, collaborating with politicians, pop stars, psychologists, adventurers and sports people to write their autobiographies.

Kerry Greenwood was born in the Melbourne suburb of Footscray and after wandering far and wide, she returned to live there. She has a degree in English and Law from Melbourne University and was admitted to the legal profession on the 1st April 1982, a day which she finds both soothing and significant. Kerry has written twenty novels, a number of plays, including The Troubadours with Stephen D'Arcy, is an award-winning children's writer and has edited and contributed to several anthologies. In 1996 she published a book of essays on female murderers called Things She Loves: Why women Kill. The Phryne Fisher series (pronounced Fry-knee, to rhyme with briny) began in 1989 with Cocaine Blues which was a great success. Kerry has written fifteen books in this series with no sign yet of Miss Fisher hanging up her pearl-handled pistol. Kerry says that as long as people want to read them, she can keep writing them. Kerry Greenwood has worked as a folk singer, factory hand, director, producer, translator, costume-maker, cook and is currently a solicitor. When she is not writing, she works as a locum solicitor for the Victorian Legal Aid. She is also the unpaid curator of seven thousand books, three cats (Attila, Belladonna and Ashe) and a computer called Apple (which squeaks). She embroiders very well but cannot knit. She has flown planes and leapt out of them (with a parachute) in an attempt to cure her fear of heights (she is now terrified of jumping out of planes but can climb ladders without fear). She can detect second-hand bookshops from blocks away and is often found within them. For fun Kerry reads science fiction/fantasy and detective stories. She is not married, has no children and lives with a registered wizard. When she is not doing any of the above she stares blankly out of the window.

After graduating in Asian history and politics at the Australian National University, Shane Maloney had the usual assortment of ragtag jobs before turning to literature. When that didn't work either, he became a full-time writer. At various times he has been a booking agent for rock bands, the promotions manager for Melbourne public radio station 3RRR, public relations director for the Boy Scouts Association, an arts bureaucrat for state and local government, general manager of the Melbourne Comedy Festival, cultural director for Melbourne's bid to host the 1996 Olympics and, finally, a swimming pool lifeguard. Maloney, the award-winning author of the Murray Whelan series of comic thrillers, is one of Australia's most popular novelists. Shane's novels have been published in North America, Germany, Finland, UK, France, and Japan. They include Stiff, The Brush-Off, Nice Try, The Big Ask and Something Fishy. Shane lives in Melbourne. Stiff and The Brush off have been turned into television movies starring David Wenham as Murray Whelan.

Peter Corris was born in Stawell, Victoria in 1942. When he was five his family left the country for Melbourne and he was educated at Melbourne High School and the University of Melbourne. After taking a Master's degree at Monash University and a PhD at the Australian National University (both in History), he was an academic, teaching and researching in various universities and a College of Advanced Education until 1975 when he gave up academia for journalism. He was literary editor of The National Times, 1980-81. He has travelled and lived for short periods in the Pacific, Britain, Europe and the USA. 

Barry Maitland was born in Scotland and grew up in London. He pursued a career in architecture, writing a number of books on architecture and urban design. In 1984, he emigrated to Australia, where he took up the position of Dean of the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Newcastle in New South Wales. He retired from the University to write full time in 2000. He lives in Australia. The first of his crime novels was published in 1994. They feature Detective Chief Inspector David Brock and his colleague, Detective Sergeant Kathy Kolla, and are set in London.

Gary Disher was born in 1949 and grew up on his parents' farm in South Australia. He gained post graduate degrees from Adelaide and Melbourne Universities. In 1978 he was awarded a creative writing fellowship to Stanford University, where he wrote his first short story collection. He travelled widely overseas, before returning to Australia, where he taught creative writing, finally becoming a full time writer in 1988. He has written more than 40 titles, including general and crime fiction, children's books, textbooks, and books about the craft of writing.

Katherine was born and raised in Sydney. After leaving school she worked in various jobs, including as an animal handler, and bookshop sales assistant, and went to university for a year to study science. Keen for something different she then joined the ambulance service, and spent the next fifteen years working on the road in various parts of NSW.

 Liz Porter is a journalist who began her career in Hong Kong and then worked in Sydney, London and Stuttgart before returning to her home town of Melbourne, where she is a feature writer for the Sunday Age. She has won awards for her writing on legal issues and has published a novel. She lives with her partner, her daughter and the obligatory female-writer quota of two cats and is a hopelessly devoted fan of the St Kilda Football Club.

I was born on the eighteenth of November, nineteen seventy-one in Adelaide, to hippy parents. We moved to New Zealand, where my brother was born, then back to Adelaide. 

Dr Leah Giarratano has had a long career as a psychologist.  An expert in psychological trauma, sex offences and psychopathology, she has had many years' experience working with victims and psychopaths.  She has worked in psychiatric hospitals, with the Australian Defence Force, and in corrective services with offenders who suffer severe personality disorders.  She has assessed and treated survivors of just about every imaginable psychological trauma, including hostages; war veterans; rape, asult, and accident victims; and has worked with police, fire and ambulance officers.

Lindy Cameron wanted to be a famous scientist when she grew up but became a surburban journalist instead, until she got bored filling the gaps between the ads and switched to book editing because it meant she didn't have to interview people. She is now a crime writer - which is what she wanted to be in the second place.

I went to Southeast Asia on a six-month scholarship and ended up staying six years. Based in Vientiane, Hanoi and finally Bangkok, I managed a HIV/AIDS prevention program for the Australian Red Cross that covered five countries in the Mekong River subregion. I returned to my hometown of Melbourne in 1998, taking a year or so out of the workforce to try and fulfil my dream of becoming a published author. My short story The Mole on the Temple won third prize at the Sisters in Crime Scarlet Stiletto Awards in 1998, and introduced Bangkok-based detective Jayne Keeney, the main character in my first full-length novel, Behind the Night Bazaar, published by The Text Publishing Company in 2006. Behind the Night Bazaar won the 2004 Victorian Premier's Literary Award in the unpublished manuscript category (as Thai Died). In the years before this, I worked as an au pair in France, before completing an Arts (Combined Honours) degree at the University of Melbourne. I have published numerous newspaper, magazine and journal articles based on my travels and my work in sexual health and international development. My partner and I lived in Canberra from 1999-2002, where I worked full-time on my writing, before returning to the paid workforce. In 2000-02, my job with the international program of Family Planning Australia took me to countries throughout the South Pacific and back to Southeast Asia. I currently work as a Policy Analyst for the community sector in Melbourne. I live with Andrew Nette, my partner since 1990, and our daughter Natasha.

Malla Nunn grew up in Swaziland before moving with her parents to Perth in the 1970s.  She attended uni in WA and then in the US.  In New York, she worked on film sets, wrote her first screenplay and met her American husband to be, before returning to Australia where she began writing and directing short films and corporate videos.  'Fade to White', 'Sweetbreeze', and 'Servant of the Ancestors' have won numerous awards and have shown at international film festivals from Zanzibar to New York. Malla and her husband live in Sydney with their two children

Melbourne born photographer Geoffrey McGeachin has had a varied career shooting pictures for advertising, travel, theatre and feature films. His work has taken him all over the world, including stints living in New York and Hong Kong. He is now based in Sydney where he teaches photography and writes.

Lenny Bartulin was born in Hobart in 1969 and lives in Sydney.  He has previously published poetry in Heat and Meanjin. 

About the Author Lindsay Simpson is the author of six works of non-fiction. She spent twelve years as an investigative journalist with The Sydney Morning Herald and was the founding member of the Journalism and Media Studies program at the University of Tasmania in 1999. She lectures in journalism and writing at James Cook University and lives on Magnetic Island with her husband, Grant. They have five children. The Curer of Souls is her first novel.

Marele Day grew up in Sydney and graduated from Sydney University with BA (Hons). Her work experience ranges from fruit picking to academic teaching, and she has worked as a freelance editor. She has travelled extensively and lived in Italy, France and Ireland. Travels include a voyage by yacht from Cairns to Singapore which resulted in near shipwreck in the Java Sea.  She now resides on the New South Wales north coast.

Born in Victoria, British Columbia, Moss is now a proud dual Australian/Canadian citizen, and resides in Sydney.  

Adrian Hyland studied classics and languages at the University of Melbourne. His career has included teaching English as a foreign language, songwriting, working in mines and on stations, as well as working in community development in remote aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory. He has drawn on his experiences living and working in indigenous communities, in the writing of his first novel, Diamond Dove. It is the first crime novel to feature an indigenous protagonist since Arthur Upfield's 'Boney' series.