Agog! Smashing Stories author biographies

Deborah Biancotti - Simon Brown - Marianne de Pierres
Brendan Duffy - Grace Dugan - Dirk Flinthart
Paul Haines - Richard Harland - Robert Hood
Trent Jamieson - Louise Katz - Justine Larbalestier
Martin Livings - Claire McKenna - Sean McMullen
Ben Peek - Jeremy Shaw - Bryn Sparks
Iain Triffitt - Kim Westwood

DEBORAH BIANCOTTI was recently told by her boss that he didn't understand what she did. Which is not a comment about the actual amount of work she does, although it could be. Deborah often finds she doesn't understand it herself. An Aurealis and Ditmar award winner, her work has appeared in Altair, Redsine, Borderlands, Ideomancer, and the previous Agog! volumes. She's also had stories in the Southern Blood, Passing Strange and Mitch? anthologies. She writes too damn slowly and is heartily damn sick of her own complaining. Her website is at www.deborahbiancotti.net. She doubts that very much good will ever come of anything.
	SIMON BROWN has written six novels: Privateer, Winter, the three books of the Keys of Power trilogy — Inheritance, Fire and Sword and Sovereign — and Born of Empire, the first in a new trilogy called the Chronicles of Kydan. The second book in the chronicles, Rival's Son, is due out from PanMacmillan this year. A collection of his short stories, Cannibals of the Fine Light, was released by Ticonderoga Publications in 1998. Simon lives with his wife Alison and two children, Edlyn and Fynn, in Mollymook, New South Wales. http://eidolon.net/homesite.html?author=simon_brown
MARIANNE DE PIERRES is the author of the Parrish Plessis series: Nylon Angel, Code Noir and Crash Deluxe. Her short fiction has appeared in Eidolon, Fables and Reflections and Simulacrum, and various book anthologies, including Agog! Smashing Stories, Forever Shores and Shelf Life. She has been an active supporter of Australian genre writing and was the co-founder of the VISION writers group, and ROR — wRiters On the Rise — a critiquing workshop for Australian professional genre writers. She was also played an integral part in the development of the Clarion South writer’s workshop.Visit her website at www.marianedepierres.com
	BRENDAN DUFFY has worked in two Melbourne community residential units with young people (8-10 and 14-16), and was amazed to find that everyone in the industry listened to and identified with Eminem — even the staff. Arson was a favourite pastime among the clients, and Brendan's employment was cut short when one of them burned down the unit. He has a few stories published and can be contacted at brendandduffy@hotmail.com.
GRACE DUGAN was a convenor of the inaugural Clarion South Writers Workshop, where she was variously good cop, bad cop, dogsbody and ping-pong opponent to a number of the other people who appear in this anthology (including its editor). Grace has a degree in Peace and Conflict Studies and is an English language teacher at Griffith University. She wrote 'Inside the Mountain' while at the Varuna Manuscript Development Awards program in Katoomba last year.
	DIRK FLINTHART lives in north-eastern Tasmania with his wife, a deranged cat, a beagle, and two very small but astonishingly chaotic boys. Largely due to the latter, he's currently writing a lot of short stuff that crops up in places like Andromeda Spaceways, Redsine, and of course, the Agog! series. In the past, Mr Flinthart has done crime fiction, travel, humour, feature journalism and radio, and has just had a short film produced. He's currently at work on longer works in Fantasy, Horror, SF and Crime ... and if the boys permit, some of it will one day see print.
PAUL HAINES grew up in the wrong part of Auckland in the '70s. Hoping not to make the mistakes of the past, he's now trapped in the wrong part of Melbourne building a huge repository for bodily fluids in his backyard. His wife's not too worried yet, but his cat is. Paul recently survived Clarion South and now dreams of making a successful living as a short story writer while beating off photographers on his doorstep. You can also find him in NFG, Aurealis, Ideomancer, Orb, Dark Animus, Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, and other journals. He's a member of SuperNOVA.
	RICHARD HARLAND has published novels in the genres of science fiction (the Eddon and Vail series), fantasy (the Heaven and Earth‚ or Ferren‚ trilogy) and bizarre gothic horror (The Vicar of Morbing Vyle and The Black Crusade).Published by Chimaera Publications, The Black Crusade won the Aurealis Award for Best Horror Novel of 2004 and the overall Golden Aurealis Award for Best Novel in any category of speculative fiction. He also won the Aurealis Award for Best Fantasy Short Story of 2004 with "Catabolic Magic". His website is at www.richardharland.net, and there's also a strange website associated with The Black Crusade at www.vilewatch.com.
ROBERT HOOD has been writing speculative fiction in all its various forms for nearly as long as Godzilla has been trashing cities. Among his longer works are the novel Backstreets and the Shades series of YA supernatural thrillers (one of which features a strange giant monster called the Night Beast). Of his 120-odd published short stories, several have been about giant monsters, including the one that appeared in Agog! Fantastic Fiction in 2002. His story in the current Agog! volume doesn't include a giant monster, though as originally conceived it boasted a REALLY big one, moon-sized (in the end he restrained himself). Meanwhile, he has edited (with Robin Pen) a whole anthology of original giant monster tales called Daikaiju! www.roberthood.net
	TRENT JAMIESON lives with his wife Diana in Brisbane. He has had stories published in various places, including Agog! Fantastic Fiction, Future Orbits, Eidolon, Altair, Aurealis, Nowa Fantastyka and Borderlands. He has recently finished a steam-punk zombie adventure novel called The Festival of Float. Thanks go out to Cat Sparks — and her remarkable gordian-knot-cutting ability — without whom 'Endure' would most probably never have seen the light of day.
LOUISE KATZ writes novels and short stories. 'Weavers of the Twilight' received an Aurealis short story award in 2004, and the YA novel, 'The Other Face of Janus', named a notable book by the Children's Book Council, was awarded an Aurealis in 2001. Louise has also self published a hand-made 'ancient' vellum-bound book, an artifact of imagined race, now in Sydney Uni's rare books collection. At the moment Louise is writing a fantasy novel (though of course everything that happens in it is TRUE) while working on her doctorate at UTS and teaching English.
	JUSTINE LARBALESTIER is a full-time writer. Her current project is a young adult fantasy trilogy, in which the door of a house in Sydney opens onto a street in New York City. The first volume will be published in March 2005 by Penguin/Razorbill USA. She's also editing a scholarly collection of feminist science fiction in the twentieth century, which will be out from Wesleyan University Press in 2005. http://www.justinelarbalestier.com/
MARTIN LIVINGS was born on his birthday and hasn't died yet. Since then, he's had around thirty stories accepted for publication in a variety of places. In 2004, his story from Agog! Terrific Tales, 'Sigmund Freud and the Feral Freeway', was simultaneously nominated for an Aurealis award, a Ditmar award and a Tin Duck award. It won none, of course, but hey, it’s an honour just to be nominated, right? Right?If you want to learn more about Martin, why not check his web site? It's guaranteed to contain no pop-up ads for generic Viagra or hard-core pornography … unless the money's right, of course. The address is: www.lonewolf.iinet.net.au
	CLAIRE MCKENNA is a Melbourne-based science fiction and dark fantasy writer. A graduate of the first Clarion South Writer's Workshop, her short stories have appeared in magazines and anthologies both in Australia and overseas. Having conquered the short story form, novels are next on the list with (at the time of this bio being written) a shortlisting for admission to the Varuna Manuscript Development program. Nominated for the Aurealis, Ditmar and George Turner Awards, and winner of the Katherine Suzannah Pritchard Award and two Natcon short story competitions, her only comment is: 'Good lord ...'
SEAN MCMULLEN is one Australia's leading SF and fantasy authors, and lives in Melbourne. He has won over a dozen awards for SF and fantasy, and has had 12 books and 50 stories published in Australia, the USA, Britain, France, Poland and Japan. He works in scientific computing and is doing a PhD in Medieval Fantasy Literature at Melbourne University. Sean is a former folk, rock and classical singer, but no longer performs professionally. He is a senior karate instructor at the Melbourne University club and is a member of the university fencing club. www.bdsonline.net/seanmcmullen/
	BEN PEEK is a Sydney-based author. He is in the final year of his doctorate, and he looks forward to the end of that. Until then, however, he spends his time with a monkey who worked in the early stages of the Russian space program as a cosmonaut, but now calls himself Monroe and spends his time writing fan letters to Angela Lansbury. Ben's fiction has most recently appeared in Forever Shores, edited by Peter McNamara and Margaret Winch, Agog! Smashing Stories, edited by Cat Sparks, and Leviathan Four: Cities, edited by Forrest Aguirre. New fiction will be appearing shortly in the magazine Potato Monkey and the ezine Ticonderoga Online. In addition, Black Sheep, a dystopian novel, will be published by Prime early in 2006. Until those things, he can be found at his blog http://benpeek.livejournal.com
JEREMY SHAW: moon watcher, sewer smeller, layabout, messy, tolerant impersonator, currently impersonating a writer — this is his first bio but if you don't like it he's happy to change it. Sometimes plays with 'Frank Sinatra's Dog', a shambolic blues/country slop band. Likes to fix things. Currently residing at 'Wits end', a non-functional Thai restaurant but partly functional ivory tower and drop-in centre. Practising member of the old Nova writers group, which lately has gone SuperNova.
	BRYN SPARKS lives in Christchurch, Aotearoa New Zealand, with his wife Christine and their three daughters. He owns no sheep. Bryn is CEO of a medical device manufacturing company, and is completing a PhD in Medicine at the Otago University, Christchurch School of Medicine. Bryn has had three finalist entries in the L. Ron Hubbard's Writers of the Future competition, and his short stories have been published in Frothing at the Mouth, Agog!: Smashing Stories, and Aoife's Kiss. He will be appearing in the spring issue of Apex Digest and issue#19 of Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine. They're all available from outstanding online vendors such as ProjectPulp or The Genre Mall. Visit him at www.bastinadoes.com
IAIN TRIFFITT has worked in radio, theatre and television but mostly in an office, where at least he was paid. He has written for the top-rating television show in Australia at the time. As a result, there is still an outstanding warrant for his arrest. He has worked as a stand-up comedian and not worked as one as well. When not raking through the ashes of past glories, he works at the only university he's managed to stay at long enough to get a degree. He lives in Sydney with his wife and far too many books, and when flying interstate he prefers to use a plane.
	KIM WESTWOOD lives in the leafy green of Canberra with her partner and her RSPCA special dog, Biscuit. In 2002, thinking that the term 'speculative' might apply to her, she sent a potentially true story to a competition and won it. 'The Oracle' was subsequently published in Redsine 9 and won an Aurealis Award. She's had three more stories published since then — two of which ('Tripping Over the Light Fantastic' in Orb #6, and 'Stella's Transformation' in Encounters) have been chosen for Best Of 2004 anthologies. This year she is taking her first novel on retreat, thanks to a Varuna Fellowship.

 

 

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Last updated: 6 March 2005