Writers

Alice Tynan

 

Alice is a committed cinephile, though there was a time she feared she might not be critical enough to review films. What a difference a festival makes! While future screenplay ideas percolate, Alice keeps busy contributing to publications including: Rotten Tomatoes, The Big Issue, TheVine, Street Press Australia, Concrete Playground, The Brag, Filmink and has recorded with the film podcast Worse Addictions. And of course every so often she loves to Trespass…

Read more of her work at www.alicetynan.com

Alyssar Helweh

Alyssar Helweh may work knee deep in the music industry, but she comes from a background in Psychology, with a wealth of knowledge regarding the human race. Whether this is because of her Psychology degree or her years spent in retail, is unknown. After taking a year off to travel around the world, her love of all things music proved too strong to ignore and she knew it was an industry she wanted to be involved with. Since her singing voice leaves something to be desired, she prefers the idea of owning a large record label. With a Diploma in Marketing, majoring in Entertainment and Music Management, she is fully equipped to unearth fresh sounds on the music scene, something she takes great delight in doing. A proud Newcastle Knights supporter and obsessive fragrance collector, she plans on retiring early and trotting the globe…a plan that may require inventing something or robbing a bank. Either one. She has a soft spot for bad reality TV, enjoys red wine, is an Earl Grey tea fan, owns a ridiculous amount of dresses and would like to be fluent in five languages by the time she’s forty

Amelia Schmidt

Amelia is a writer, she supposes, if she’s going to be honest about it. She writes for and runs Throw Shapes (www.throwshapes.com.au) which means she has to know lots about stuff that’s cool and good. Sometimes she feels like she’s writing her whole life. She also writes short fiction (www.ameliaschmidt.tumblr.com) and takes photos every now and then (www.flickr.com/photos/meeli), when she hasn’t got her head stuck in a book. She also plays in some band, teaches music and has a crush on Melbourne. She likes sausage dogs, the colour red and buying records.

Andrew Geeves

Andrew hails from the crisp, clean air of the Blue Mountains. He has studied psychology and social policy and has just started a PhD at Macquarie University this year exploring music, memory and emotion. Andrew becomes engrossed in jogging, music, ideas, coffee, possibility, food, wine, questions, exploring, reading and talking although not necessarily in that order. He is interested in what makes people tick and attempts to pursue this question across a number of fairly diverse fields. As a result, his conversation topics can vary from embodied cognition and its implications for affective proprioception to who should have won America’s Next Top Model (Isis this season, in case you’re wondering).

Andrew Smyth-Kirk

Andrew is a Sydney based finance employee. All things Ancient and Roman list highly in his immediate needs and desires. Second to these is a constant need for study. Not satisfied currently with what he has got, Andrew gets a lame kick out of the respect and notoriety (or lack of) that only numerous paper qualifications can provide. An unrealistic love of Italy and its lazy attitude towards all the things we hold close, drives a yearly pilgrimage to the forum. He has tried numerous artistic avenues including radio, art and music; all proved to satisfy the need for expression at the time. They will come around again, but not at the moment. The confusion of expression with income earning expression has been understood and discontinued, only to be replaced with a fun CBD office vibe and numerous Friday night “work drinks”. Having said that, all things of a political and cultural nature continue to be important life stimulants. Andrew is an avid collector of ancient numismatics and a boisterous proponent of Australian sport, particularly rugby union.

Antonia Hayes

Antonia Hayes is a 27 year old writer, photographer and mother of one who woke up one morning somewhere in between The Eiffel Tower and Invalides unsure how she ended up there but decided to stay anyway.

Originally from Sydney, she has been living in Paris since 2006 but still can’t remember which one is the Left Bank and which is the Right Bank. Antonia is currently working on her first novel “Relativity”, can be found twice a week on the Eurostar (Coach 5, seat 55!), and is pretty sure she lives on the Left Bank. Her photographs have been featured in publications including The Guardian, Singapore Airlines inflight magazine Silver Kris, Getty Images, Now Public, Drum Media and The Brag. Yesterday she found her hairbrush inside the fridge.

www.antoniahayes.com

Beth Wilson

Beth Wilson is the Film Editor for Trespass Magazine. A Brit based in Sydney, Beth is constantly fighting for an organised queuing system and the right to call chips, crisps. Beth also writes film reviews for Onya Magazine and The Brag. All her reviews, articles and interviews can be found at her blog, B Movies.

Brad Hills

Brad is first and foremost a Shire boy. If you don’t know what that means, he pities you. He is an actor and TV host now living in Los Angeles after enduring 6 years in New Zealand and countless losses to the All Blacks. As an actor he has of course worked in just about every industry known to man to make a living…as a restaurant manager, a tennis umpire, a ghost hunter, a celebrity manager and running a National Poker League. He is currently a reindeer named Hollywood. If you can’t find him at a cafe drinking coffee and reading a script, then he will be at home watching Family Guy or Entourage DVDs. If you’ve never seen either of those shows, he pities you.

Brooke Jury

Brooke has too much on her plate.

As well as a writer, she also manages to be Artistic Director for The Winestain Project theatre company, an internationally acclaimed graphic designer and illustrator, a semi-regular figure at Melbourne fashion events and a Computer Sciences Masters student.

She has a half-built theremin, a very full passport, and a screenprinting set-up in her little Melbourne apartment.

She is very fond of fitted interesting suits and can often be found reading comics. She doesn’t like the mainstream superhero ones, though. The storylines are horrid.

 

Chantelle Thompson

Chantelle Thompson eats cake everyday and absolutely has to have something sweet before bed. She is happiest surrounded by a table of delicious food made with friends shared with some gorgeous wine.   

A food columnist for Medical Observer Magazine, Chantelle is passionate about getting people cooking good food. A classically trained singer, music teacher and choir conductor, she has spent the last four years documenting everything she cooks and devouring cookbooks.

You will often find a cupcake in Chantelle’s handbag, which she will happily share with you. 

 

Charles Usher

Charlie Usher is an American freelance writer and editor currently living in Seoul, South Korea.  He is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Speakeasy magazine and parties (www.speakeasyseoul.com), and blogs about Seoul neighborhoods by subway stop at Seoul Sub→urban (seoulsuburban.com).  He has what normal people would think of as an inverted sense of priority, and considers his regular job – teaching English – to be what he does in his spare time.  In addition to the U.S. and South Korea, he’s lived in Italy, New Zealand, and Melbourne.

David Abkiewicz

David Abkiewicz is a Sydney writer who enjoys British comedy, American sci-fi and almost any music at least a decade older than he is. He spends his spare time over-committing to real and imaginary musical projects and cultivating neuroses for fun and profit.

Fiona Carruthers

 
Over the past decade, Fiona has worked for The Australian, The Financial Times, the ABC and Deutsche Welle Radio. In September 2007, she quit her well-paid exciting job as a features writer with The Australian Financial Review in order to pen her first book, The Horse in Australia, published by Random House in August this year. She has made very little money from the book and lost a terrifying amount of income. Despite this, she is not bitter and would still advise anyone so inclined to quit or scale back their day job in order to nourish a creative project. She is currently working on a number of features for the AFR and especially enjoys rural stories and being photographed with calves.

Foz Meadows

Foz Meadows is a bipedal mammal with delusions of immortality. She likes cheese, geekery and silly hats. Her first novel, Solace & Grief, a young adult fantasy title, is due for release by Ford Street Publishing in March 2010. She is currently on a jaunt around the United Kingdom with her tame philosopher-husband, but lives nominally in Melbourne.

Glenn Dunks

 

Glenn Dunks is a Libran and, like most Librans, is incredibly indecisive. However, one thing he does not have to second-guess is his love for film in its many incarnations. He is just as likely to be found hailing the treasures of a new European art film, as he is spruiking the abundance of greatness that is Showgirls or Xanadu. Glenn hails from the hometown of Geelong (hometown of Portia de Rossi!) but now lives in Melbourne and is an active blogger at Stale Popcorn, which he founded and has maintained for over three years. He also writes for Onya and can occasionally be found speaking on JOY 94.3. To quote the immortal Dolly Parton in 9 to 5– he’s just waiting for the day his ship will come in. A big, pretty ship that screens movies in its world class screening room 24 hours a day with an endless supply of Maltesers…of course.

Goldele Rayment

Goldele is your general pain is the ass artist – over-excited, emphatic and egotistical.

She now calls Melbourne home but at various times has lived in Adelaide, Wollongong, Mildura and Philadelphia, USA.

Addicted to theatre since a child, she graduated with a Bachelor of Performing Arts from Monash University in 2007 and is now the Chief Monkey aka Creative Director of her own independent theatre company The Winestain Project (www.winestain.com.au)

She primarily works as a director/producer but can often be found behind the scenes as a stage manager and occasionally on stage as a performer. She recently started writing theatre reviews so she could scam free tickets and also because she could not resist the chance to have her name in yet another public domain.

Grace Edwards

Grace is a Melbourne-based freelance writer with a background in both dance and music. Apart from studying musicology and history at the University of Melbourne, she spends her time talking about dance, dreaming about dance, watching dance and, well, dancing.

Originally hailing from New Zealand, she has a tendency to add ‘ey?’ to the end of her sentences when she speaks, which is often. In order to stop her friends tearing their hair out from her constant babbling, Grace has carefully cultivated a number of other interests over the years.  These include eating chocolate, playing the piano, singing, drinking coffee, and sleeping. Especially sleeping.

Follow Grace’s musings on dance and the arts on her blog at: http://gracedwards.wordpress.com

Or stalk her on twitter: www.twitter.com/gracedwards

Greg Foyster

Greg Foyster’s fiction and non-fiction has been published in The Age, Sydney Morning Herald, Crikey!, New Matilda, Voiceworks, Harvest, Page Seventeen, Visible Ink and The Death Mook (Vignette Press 2008). He is currently writing a humour book about the internet’s impact on young people’s attention spans. Visit gregfoyster.com for more info.

Jarrad Harvey

Jarrad Harvey is your genuine mixed-bag. He is a law student, but probably should have been an artist. He’s also midway through a business degree, but thinks at his age, meandering barefooted through the Tuscan foothills would have been a far better choice. He is fiercely conservative, yet so far in the ether that if it wasn’t for the smell of Joop, we wouldn’t know he was here. He has a penchant for the casual skydive, finely-cut men’s clothes, Bond (…James Bond), even finer (red) wine and rifling through the pile of vintage Vogues and GQs nestled proudly at the foot of his bed. His true love is travel and enjoys trawling Webjet.com for plane tickets to Moscow, Stockholm and other impossibly art-cool destinations he cannot possibly afford. Despite this love, Jarrad will always call leafy Sydney home. If you want him, try looking under a mass of contract law or economics books; but tread quietly, he’s probably asleep.

Jess Paine

Jess Paine is a journalist currently working in television.  As a result she has far too little sleep and is prone to gazing off distantly as if she is pondering the universe.  It can almost be completely guaranteed she isn’t.  There’s a good chance she’s trying to cast the movie of her life, breaking down the 10 minute shot in Atonement or simply sleeping with her eyes open.

Jess Porquez

Jess is an American, currently residing in Portland, Oregon. She has yet to formulate any sort of life plan (except to be reincarnated as a flamenco dancer. Or Cher.) or to utilize the degree that she will be paying off well into late adulthood. Jess can be a bit too snarky for her own good, and despite several valiant attempts, remains tragically unorganized.

Joyce Kwok

Joyce is a Hong Kong born, Tassie and Brisbane bred and now Melbourne based blogger. She’s the face and brains behind MEL: HOT OR NOT – The decisive guide to Melbourne (www.melhotornot.com) and BNE: HOT OR NOT – The decisive guide to Brisbane (www.bnehotornot.com), when she’s not moonlighting as an intellectual property, media and IT lawyer.

Since her first overseas tip to Okinawa aged 12 months, Joyce has eaten, slumbered, hiked and audio-guided her way through approximately 50 countries and she intends to keep up the count. More than anything, Joyce likes eating pastries, watching ballet, receiving fresh flowers, collecting discount vouchers and cycling around the city in stilettos, a floaty dress and her designer Danish bike helmet.

You can keep up with Joyce on Twitter at http://twitter.com/jetsettingjoyce

Justine Marshall

Justine is Sydney born and bred, but on a quest to visit every country in the world at least once.  She decided to begin by trying to conquer all countries beginning with ‘i’ and then later realised that this included Iran and Iraq.  She remains undeterred.  Between bouts of travel she does odd jobs, none of which ever seem to involve anything she learned in five years studying Italian at university.  Her interests include current affairs, photography, food and the colour blue.  She will eat just about anything and is often found at the cinema, stuck into a gossip mag in a café, or singing loudly and discordantly to something on Triple J while driving.  She has never been known to arrive on time.

Ben McKenzie

Ben McKenzie is an actor, comedian, writer and Graeme Garden look-a-like. His writer/performer credits include comedy science lectures as “the Man in the Lab Coat”, Channel 31 variety show Planet Nerd, hit monthly sketch show The Anarchist Guild Social Committee and the short play A Record or an OBE. He has performed in arts festivals, short films and as part of Science Week, and also works as a presenter and voice-over artist for educational programmes. He blogs about science at labcoatman.com.au and about books at bunchofauthors.blogspot.com. His favourite dinosaur is the Stegosaurus.

Kaushik Sridhar

Born in India, raised in Nigeria, moved to USA at 14, lived in Australia for 2 years; this is the background of Kaushik. At 14, Kaushik left Nigeria on a tennis scholarship to pursue a career in professional tennis in the United States. He played in professional tournaments all over the world, and achieved a top 1000 ranking in 2001 before calling it a career, and moving on to his undergraduate studies.

Kaushik is a Doctoral Scholar (PhD) at the Macquarie Graduate School of Management (MGSM). His thesis is in the area of sustainability. Since commencing the PhD, he has published two papers in international journals, as well as published one working paper at the Macquarie Graduate School of Management. Prior to the PhD, Kaushik did his MBA at MGSM in 2008, and graduated in the top 10% of the class. He did his Bachelor of Science in Business and Art (double major), in South Carolina, and graduated dux of the class.

Kudrat Singh

Kudrat is 20-something novice writer who started by writing short stories for friends and family whilst unwell, to ensure that no time was wasted in solitary confinement. Now successfully healthy, with a regular and inspiring desk job, she has graduated to writing reviews for films to concerts and everything in between. Extremely opinionated and independent, all views and thoughts expressed by Kudrat come from a deeply passionate and personal place.

Lachlan Guselli

Lachlan is a Sydney based Journalist, editor of The Debaser Online and wannabe flaneur (guy who watches the world go by; it’s a cheap way of wasting a day). Spending most of his time daydreaming, when he is at his busiest he dreams of nothing but a house with two evenly spaced trees to hang a hammock and wile away the sunny months listening to cricket on the radio and drinking something with a big umbrella in it. He can never find his keys, but he is sure to remember the lyrics of every Beatles song ever written and while he wishes he could write like Oscar Wilde, it usually ends up sounding like Oscar the Grouch. If cars ran on puns he would put in more miles than Mark Webber, alas they don’t and so he constantly lives life on the red line. But he doesn’t mind so much, at least it gives him something to fill out this bio with.

Lin Tan

Lin Tan is a Melbourne-based freelance writer and the Editor of Trespass who’s originally from Malaysia but spent her formative years living in London.  Her ‘tri-brid’ background (philosophy, business, chef) most likely explains her upstairs mix-up. She loves writing about everything, from reviews to opinion pieces to short fiction and poetry.  Her work can be found in Onya Magazine, GO, Beat, and some others she won’t bore you with.  When not writing, you’ll most likely find her doing something.  And when she talks, she has the propensity to say things.  Whatever profound things they may be, Lin will always stubbornly insist that she can, in fact, do the moonwalk (I assure you she can’t). One thing’s for sure, she’s never opposed to the idea of a new adventure, no matter how inconvenient the timing may be.  She hopes that writing will one day buy her some bread.  Her online portfolio is www.lin-tan.com.

Lisa Dempster

Lyrian Fleming

Lyrian Fleming is a writer from Sydney who uses poetry and prose to keep sane. When she is at home, Lyrian can be found lurking in second-hand bookshops, hiding behind dark glasses, or buying tickets she can’t afford. Obsessed with ideas, she looks everywhere for great ones; some of her favourites have been found under rocks, in empty coffee cups, and on the back of other people’s postcards. Lyrian regularly fluctuates between wanting it all and being happy with little more than a piece of dark chocolate with bitter orange twists.

Check out her blog: http://lyrianfleming.tumblr.com/

Marc Vincenz

Marc Vincenz is of Swiss-British descent, was born in Hong Kong, and worked in China for many years. Recently based out of Iceland, he  writes a column for The Reykjavik Grapevine, Iceland’s English language newspaper.  He is a Contributing Editor for Boston’s Open Letters Monthly. His poetry has appeared, or is forthcoming in various journals, including: the nervous breakdown, MiPo: Poets & Artists, nthposition, FRiGG, Prick of the Spindle, Inertia, and Danse Macabre.

Melissa Wellham

Melissa Wellham is studying a Bachelor of Not Very Much At All Actually (ostensibly English and Politics). She is a movie buff, word nerd, music snob, mag hag, comic book aficionado, and zine maker. When she grows up will probably be a public service pleb, but dreams of being a travelling troubadour and/or bard.

Nadia Owen

Sydney born but always craving more, Nadia hit London in 2006 and now trawls the cocktail and canapé scene working in PR & Events. She enjoys baking, travelling, 1970s disco tracks, pouting, playing hide and seek with her pet Turtle, crying at any film, and rubbing shoulders with the rich and fabulous. Or the drunk and hilarious. Either way, she likes rubbing shoulders.

Nadia has an unhealthy obsession with moving to Iceland, investing in costume jewellery, and buying shoes that she’ll never wear. A qualified hair and makeup artist, she also runs a business called Urban Gloss in her spare time, and has worked weddings as well as the London theatre scene, including “Wicked”.

Nadia is single-handedly trying to date her way through the United Kingdom in order to one day settle down with the Prince of some inconsequential Eastern European country and be famous for being awesome.

Nicole Madigan

Nicole Madigan has dabbled in a bit of everything, mostly involving writing and mostly for the corporate giants – until now. After completing a Bachelor of Business Communications, Nicole had a fleeting visit with marketing before venturing into the world of media.  She was a journalist with News Limited for some years before swapping mediums to become a journalist and presenter with the Nine Network in Brisbane - weaving in a bit of PR consulting at the same time. Nicole left the corporate world in 2008 and is now a freelance writer, presenter, PR consultant and mum-of-one – but not in that order.

Nikita Ramkissoon

Nikita Ramkissoon: Lesser spotted. Found mainly in the greater Johannesburg area and sometimes seen in Durban and various camping spots in South Africa. Grazes on the go and studies a lot, having just completed a Masters in Gender Studies. Can be spotted mainly at gigs as she is crazy about South African music and entertainment. A few words to describe the lesser spotted Nikita: Environmentalist. Tourist. Artist. Non-Feminist Feminist. Activist. Evolutionist. Anti-religionist. Bloggist. Journalist. Photographist. Greatest.

Prayrika Mathur