Crosstown Traffic

Stuart Coupe is a journalist, editor, writer and book reviewer in Australia with fingers in a lot of pies. While a student in Adelaide, Stuart Coupe co-edited the fanzine Roadrunner, an experience that led to further work as a freelance writer. He consolidated his career in the music industry as manager of acts such as the Hoodoo Gurus and Paul Kelly. He has since worked as a promoter, record label director, freelance writer, retailer, editor and author. Coupe's writing on the music industry has appeared regularly in Australian newspapers and magazines.

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.

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.

Jean Bedford was born in Cambridge, England in 1946 and came to Australia in 1947. She was brought up in Victoria and after university taught English as a second language and worked as a journalist. She was Literary Editor of the National Times and now works as a literary consultant. In 1982 she won the Stanford Writing Fellowship and travelled to the United States to take it up. Jean Bedford's short stories have appeared in Nation Review, The National Times and Meanjin. 

Steve Wright was born in London and now lives in Coledale, NSW. He has written full-time for television, film and the stage since 1983.

Robert Hood was born on the 24th of July, 1951, in Rydalmere, NSW. He attended Rydalmere Primary School, and then -- when his family moved to Sydney's northern beaches in the 1960s -- Collaroy Plateau Primary School. By the time he reached high school, he had developed a taste for weird movies. In his first year at Narrabeen Boys' High School, he wrote an assignment on H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds. He became obsessed with science fiction and fantasy stories, but read anything he could get his hands on. It's said that his classroom compositions became progressively longer and weirder. 

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. 

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.