Linda Jaivin is the internationally best-selling author of five novels and two works of non-fiction, including the comic-erotic Eat Me, the China memoir The Monkey and the Dragon and her most recent novel An Infernal Optimist, a dark comedy set in an immigration detention centre. Jaivin is a fluent Mandarin speaker who lived in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan for nine years and has done literary and film translation as well as arts writing on China. While at The Bookworm, Beijing, she worked on a new novel set in China as well as projects touching on Chinese history, biography and the arts.

Supported by the Australia-China Council.

Simon Patton is a Brisbane based freelance literary translator and part-time teacher of Chinese at the University of Queensland. Patton has been translating Chinese literature for over fifteen years, especially contemporary poetry. During his residency, Patton completed a substantial number of new translations of the poetry of Yu Jian, a well-known poet from Yunnan, and of contemporary Chinese poetry for a new Chinese poetry website launched by the Netherlands-based Poetry International Foundation.

Supported by the Australia Council and Arts Queensland.

Twice one of The Sydney Morning Herald's Best Young Australian Novelists, James Bradley is the author of three novels, The Resurrectionist, Wrack and The Deep Field, and a book of poetry, Paper Nautilus.  During his residency at the Australian Studies Centre, East China Normal University in Shanghai, Bradley researched patterns of city life in 1930s and 21st century Shanghai which he plans to work into a novel.  Bradley also took part in the Shanghai Writers' Festival, gave lectures at East China Normal University and travelled to several cities in China for further research.     Since his return Bradley has been asked to review several books about China by The Sydney Morning Herald.

Supported by the Australia Council and the NSW Ministry for the Arts.

Mark Mordue is a feature writer, editor, filmmaker and travel writer. His book Dastgah: Diary of a Head Trip was published in 2000. During his residency in China, hosted by Peking University’s Australian Studies Centre, he worked on his first novel based around an Australian journalist working in modern day Beijing. Through this character, he explores the changing nature of Chinese society and communist rule as it grapples with economic development, as well as the complicity of western journalists in the events and forces occurring around them. 

Supported by the Australia China Council and the Australia Council.

Peter Bakowski has been writing poetry for over twenty years with publication in literary journals worldwide. He has held various national and international writers’ residencies and his first book won the Victorian Premier’s Award for Poetry. Based at the University of Macau Bakowski developed new poems based on his experience of the physical, intellectual, commercial and social environments of Macau and mainland China. The primary focus of the poems was to show the effects these environments have on the individual, exploring voluntary and involuntary exile, tradition and change, individual fulfillment or alienation, political and spiritual beliefs. Bakowski has since been commissioned by the State of Victoria to write a poem and be poet-in-residence at Suzhou University in celebration of the 30th anniversary of friendship status between Victoria and Jiangsu Province, China. Bakowski gave 24 poetry readings during his residency.

Supported by the Australia Council.

Benjamin Law is a writer and journalist, and contributes regularly to various publications including The Monthly, frankie, Qweekend and The Big Issue. He completed a doctorate in television screenwriting at the Queensland University of Technology in 2009, and his personal essays have been anthologised in The Best Australian Essays 2008 and 2009, as well as a forthcoming book to be published by Black Inc. in 2010. He intends to use his Asialink residency with Peking University to research and examine the lives of young gay, lesbian and transgender people throughout China.

Supported by Arts Queensland and the Australia Council.

Dr. Margaret Bradstock is a Sydney writer, reviewer, academic and critic whose work has been widely published and anthologised.  She has lectured in the School of English at the University of New South Wales for 25 years and is the author/co-editor of 13 books of fiction, biography and poetry. At Peking University, Dr Bradstock was able to contribute to the University’s understanding of Australian literature, especially poetry. The residency also provided her with experiences towards writing a collection of poetry about China and the Chinese people. Dr Bradstock has been invited to return as a lecturer at Beida (Peking University) and has been registered for lecturing and teaching at Beijing Normal University.

Supported by the Australia Council and NSW Ministry for the Arts.

Andrew Sant is an award-winning poet from Tasmania. He has published five collections of poetry, most recently Album of Domestic Exiles and Russian Ink. Sant was founding editor of the literary magazine Island, and his work has been extensively anthologised in books and journals. While in China Sant worked on a collection of poems which referenced aspects of Chinese poetry.  He presented a talk and workshop at the AEF Linking Lattitudes Conference in Shanghai and participated in the Liberties of Print Reading with well-known Chinese poets and academics at Peking University where his work was translated into Chinese. He also gave lectures for staff and students at the university and was invited back in 2002 to teach a course there. 

Supported by Arts Tasmania and the Australia China Council.

Marcus Westbury is a writer, broadcaster and media maker. His writings and essays have been published in many Australian newspapers, journals and magazines and he has written and presented programs on ABC radio and television. After visiting Beijing in 2009 Marcus took a keen interest in the changing cultural dynamics of the city and he will use his residency with Peking University to explore and write about these themes. (SUPPORTED BY THE AUSTRALIA COUNCIL FOR THE ARTS AND ARTS VICTORIA)

Carolin Window is the author of two novels, Dim and Shark Song, both published by Vintage. In Shark Song Window explored the myths and history of Oceania and she has a strong interest in the connections to be made between Australian and Asian fictions. During her residency in China, Window worked on a new novel about racial tensions in small-town Australia involving a young Chinese girl and other Chinese characters. The residency provided the background research and understanding for her portrait of the Chinese diaspora in Australia and Window completed a quarter of her novel while there. 

Supported by Arts Queensland and the Australia Council.

Alice Pung is a writer, journalist and lawyer. Her book, Unpolished Gem, won the 2007 Newcomer of the Year Australian Book Industry Awards, and is studied as a secondary and tertiary education text in schools nationally. Pung has edited an anthology of stories about growing up of Asian background in Australia, and she also writes frequently for national journals and newspapers. During her residency at Peking University Pung wrote about the migrant experience in a new country, and researched, in preparation for her next book, why her grandparents left China to start their adult working lives in Cambodia.
Read Alice's Blog

Supported by Arts Victoria, Australia-China Council and the Australia Council.

Xenia Hanusiak is an award-winning writer and performer whose work spans theatre, opera, video and cultural journalism. Appearances at major international arts festivals in New York, Denmark, Canada, Singapore and Italy and all the Australian arts festivals have led to many commissions and collaborations. Collaborations include New York Young People’s Chorus, Elena Kats–Chernin, Australian String Quartet, the State Opera companies and theatre companies. During her residency at Peking University, Hanusiak developed a libretto - a new work based on a Chinese miner who arrived in the Bendigo Goldfields in 1854.

Supported by the Malcolm Robertson Foundation.

Daniel Huppatz is a writer and academic based in Melbourne.  At the time of his residency he taught design history and theory at RMIT and had submitted a PhD on design in Hong Kong. Huppatz has published a wide variety of writing including poetry, literary criticism and fiction, as well as articles and reviews on contemporary art.  In 1998 he co-founded Textbase, a literary journal and experimental small press. During his residency in Beijing, Huppatz completed a number of poems that he intends to work into a book-length manuscript.  He also conducted several lectures at the Austalian Studies centres in Beijing and Shanghai and held a poetry reading at the Bookworm bookstore.

Supported by the Australia-China Council.
 

Jennifer Mills is the author of the novel The Diamond Anchor and a chapbook of poems, Treading Earth. She won the 2008 Marian Eldridge Award for Young Emerging Women Writers, the Pacific Region of the 2008-09 Commonwealth Short Story Competition, and the 2008 Northern Territory Literary Awards: Best Short Story. During her residency at bookstore and event complex The Bookworm, she will immerse herself in Chinese writing, and hopes to investigate the cultural impact of the changing economic relationship between Australia and China.

Supported by the Australia-China Council and the Australia Council.

John Mateer is a poet and art-critic. He has published five books of poems in Australia, and a number of smaller publications, often in translation, in Australia, South Africa, Indonesia, Japan, Macao and Portugal. His forthcoming books are Southern Barbarians, a collection of poems about the Portuguese empire, a gathering of twenty years of his South African poetry titled Ex-White, and a New and Selected edition of his Australian poems, The West. His residency at the Bookworm allowed him to investigating the experience and thought of European writers – Luis de Camoes, Camillo Pessanha and Victor Segalen – who lived in those regions in the early modern period.

Supported by The WA Department of Culture And The Arts, and The Australia China Council.

Ouyang Yu is a Melbourne-based poet, translator, editor, academic and essayist.  He is the author of four books of poetry including Songs of the Last Chinese Poet and has also translated and published a number of Australian works into Chinese. During Ouyang’s literature residency he worked on his non-fiction book, On the Smell of an Oily Rag: Notes in the Margins which explores the similarities and differences between Australian and Chinese literary and cultural traditions. He also launched his translation of The Man Who Loved Children, published his own novel The Angy Wu Zili, and gave numerous lectures and talks. 

Supported by the Australia China Council and Arts Victoria.

Poet, editor and new media artist James Stuart’s residency at The Bookworm, Chengdu, resulted in two strands of literary work: a series of poems exploring a loosely mythological reaction to Chinese history, culture and language; and a collaborative translation project, Conversions, which brought the work of three Chinese ethnic nationality poets into English. Conversions saw Stuart coordinate and mentor a team of first-time translators who worked closely with the poets. The final translations and original poems were printed as large-scale banners (designed by Stuart) and mounted on Chinese scrolls as part of Chengdu’s first ‘poetry exhibition’. Conversions will tour The Bookworm's venues in Beijing and Suzhou before exhibiting in Australia.

Supported by Arts NSW and the Australia Council.

Sang Ye is a Queensland based non-fiction writer, editor and interviewer whose publications include: Chinese in China, Chinese Lives and in Australia, The Year the Dragon Came, as well as The Finish Line. He has also written a number of articles and short stories. During his residency in China Sang Ye researched his forthcoming book, a social history of Wangfujin Road, Beijing, a centrepoint of Chinese cultural, historical and economic activity this century.  In Beijing, Sang Ye completed a draft of his book and gave lectures at various universities on Australian literature and culture.

Supported by the Australia China Council.

Linda Neil is a writer, musician and producer with a PhD in Creative Writing. In 2009 Linda was the ABC National Radiophonic artist in residence and also released her first book Learning How to Breathe. Her work considers the significance of music across a range of contexts. Her residency project with the Shanghai Writing Program, entitled Singing Love Songs in China, will enable Linda to explore songs and music about connection, intimacy, cohesion and cooperation in both traditional and contemporary China. (SUPPORTED BY THE AUSTRALIA COUNCIL FOR THE ARTS AND ARTS NSW)