COURSE CONTRIBUTORS

Cate Kennedy

Cate Kennedy is an Australian author who is published as a novelist, short story author, poet and essayist. She studied Professional Writing and Editing at the University of Canberra and Literature Studies at the Australian National University. She worked in theatre and community development before settling into freelance writing, and in her home country of Australia is best-known as a short story practitioner.

Her most recent story collection, Like A House on Fire won the 2012 Queensland Literary Award as well as being shortlisted for the inaugural Stella Prize and the Kibble Award. Her third poetry collection The Taste of River Water was awarded the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Poetry and her novel, The World Beneath, was shortlisted for The Age Book of the Year Award, the Barbara Jefferis Award and the N.S.W. Premier’s Prize for fiction. It won the “People’s Choice” prize in these awards and has been translated into French and Mandarin.

Dr Catherine Padmore

Dr Catherine Padmore is Head of the Department of Creative Arts and English, La Trobe University. She teaches creative writing and literary studies, with research interests in historical and biographical fictions. Catherine’s novel, Sibyl’s Cave (Allen and Unwin, 2004) was shortlisted for The Australian/Vogel Award and commended in the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize (First Book category, SE Asia region). She was the winner of the 2020 Nillumbik Prize for Contemporary Writing (local fiction category and Mayor’s Award). Catherine has received two fellowships at Varuna, the Writers’ House, to develop novels-in-progress about Tudor women Amy Dudley and the Flemish painter Levina Teerlinc.

Dr Stephanie Downes

Dr Stephanie Downes is a lecturer in the English and Creative Writing Program at La Trobe University. She specialises in the history of books and reading, with a particular focus on medieval and early modern publishing cultures.

Dr Kelly Gardiner

Dr Kelly Gardiner is a writer and teacher of creative writing at La Trobe University. Her new series is the time-slip trilogy, The Firewatcher Chronicles, which begins with Brimstone. Her previous novel, 1917: Australia’s Great War, was shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Young People’s History Prize and the Asher Award. Kelly’s other books include the young adult novels Act of Faith and The Sultan’s Eyes, both of which were shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards and CBCA Notable Books; the Swashbuckler pirate trilogy; and Goddess, a novel for adults based on the life of the seventeenth century French swordswoman and opera singer, Mademoiselle de Maupin.

Dr Jacqueline Millner

Dr Jacqueline Millner is Associate Professor of Visual Arts at La Trobe University. Until recently she was Associate Professor of Art History and Theory at Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney. She has published widely on contemporary Australian and international art in key anthologies, journals and catalogues of national and international galleries and museums. Her books include Conceptual Beauty: Perspectives on Australian Contemporary Art (Artspace, 2010), Australian Artists in the Contemporary Museum (Ashgate, with Jennifer Barrett, 2014), Fashionable Art (Bloomsbury, with Adam Geczy, 2015), and Feminist Perspectives on Art: Contemporary Outtakes (Routledge, co-edited with Catriona Moore, 2018).

She has curated major multi-venue exhibitions and public programs including Curating Feminism (2014), Future Feminist Archive (2015), Femflix (2016), and received several prestigious research grants and residencies including from the Australia Council, Arts NSW, Bundanon Trust, and Cite Internationale des Arts, Paris. She co-convenes the research cluster Contemporary Art and Feminism (contemporaryartandfeminism.com), is currently leading the research project Care: Feminism, Art, Ethics in the age of neoliberalism (2018-2021), and completing the manuscript Contemporary Art and Feminism for Routledge.

Dr Paddy O’Reilly

Dr Paddy O’Reilly is a lecturer in the Creative and Professional Writing Program at La Trobe University. She is the author of three novels, The Factory, The Fine Colour of Rust and The Wonders, and two collections of short stories, The End of the World and Peripheral Vision. Her novels and stories have won and been shortlisted for many major awards, and have been published, anthologised and broadcast in Australia, Europe, the UK and the USA.

THE ART OF WRITING NGV MAGAZINE

Especially for The Art of Writing, this digital edition of NGV Magazine includes the NGV writings referred to in the course and more, showing the different ways that a writer can approach the idea of using art or design as the seed for creative writing, from prose and poetry through to reflection and long-form narrative non-fiction. You can view the magazine here.