Sydney Writers' Festival

JUDITH LUCY (INTERSTATE)
Judith Lucy is a local funny lady who has turned her hand to radio (Ladies Lounge, Foxy Ladies, The Friday Shout, The Arvo) until she was sacked; television (The Late Show, The Mick Molloy Show) until the last regular show she was on was axed; and movies (Crackerjack, Bad Eggs), although she has not been asked to appear in one of these for years.

Judith is probably best known as a stand-up comedian who has taken her eight one-woman shows around the country and overseas. Unfortunately, her last tour was dogged by feet trouble and vaginitis, so having run out of career options (seriously, she is just a heartbeat away from performing opposite someone in an animal costume in a shopping centre) she has written this book about her parents.

The Lucy Family Alphabet is funny and ruthlessly honest, but also a moving tribute to the lunatics who raised one of Australia’s best-known comedians.

also appearing at...
190: An Evening with Judith Lucy

RYAN KNIGHTON (INTERNATIONAL)
Ryan Knighton completed a BA (Hons) in English at Simon Fraser University in Canada and then, after teaching in South Korea for a year, began his MA, again at SFU, completing it in 1998.

He is a published poet, fiction writer and journalist and has taught contemporary literature, pop-culture, rhetoric and creative writing. He is also the author of Swing in the Hollow and co-authored Cars with George Bowering, Canada’s first poet laureate.

Ryan is in the final stage before total blindness. His most recent book is Cockeyed: A Memoir.

Ryan Knighton’s participation in Sydney Writers’ Festival is supported by the Canada Council for the Arts.
www.ryanknighton.com

also appearing at...
164: Ryan Knighton in Conversation
185: As Slow As Possible

IMRAN AHMAD (INTERNATIONAL)
Imran Ahmad was severely traumatised at the age of seven, when Michael Swallow pushed in front of him in the school lunch queue and secured the last plate of fish and chips – leaving Imran no ‘choice’ but a horrid egg flan. He compensated for this loss by subsequently eating fish and chips on every possible occasion for the next 40 years (resulting in a severe reprimand from his cardiologist).

Too lazy to get the grades he needed for medical school, he ended up at Stirling University in Scotland, studying chemistry, learning about Islam and trying to impress women. Ultimately he was quite successful in Chemistry and became quite knowledgeable about Islam as well, but he didn’t impress any women – despite having an Alfa Romeo and a microwave oven (quite possibly the only privately owned microwave on campus at that time).

In careers brochures, he saw people in business suits, travelling and having meetings. (This looked like fun to him, but he wasn't sure what the people in suits actually did.) He persuaded one of those big global companies to hire him into their graduate scheme and he ended up working all over the world.

His book, Unimagined, was selected by no less than three major newspapers (The Independent, The Guardian and The Sydney Morning Herald) in their ‘books of the year’ lists. The Dutch version was released recently and is called Mohammed, Jezus en James Bond (there being no catchy word for ‘Unimagined’ in Dutch, apparently) and the television series is being developed.

Imran is on the Board of British Muslims for Secular Democracy, which opposes the imposition of theological or regressive cultural values on any individual, group or gender.

His business travels in the 90s included many visits to Sydney, where he was on one occasion bumped from his favourite hotel room because some fella called Jackson had booked – in their entirety – the top four storeys of the Sheraton on the Park. But it got even worse. On Imran’s return from the office one day – and despite him proffering his Sheraton Club International card – a bodyguard thug in a leather jacket wouldn’t let him through the screaming crowd into the hotel, saying: “You’ll have to wait until Michael Jackson arrives.” Imran still gets upset when he remembers this.
www.unimagined.co.uk

also appearing at...
120: An Unimagined Evening with Imran Ahmad in Parramatta
303: An Unimagined Journey with Imran Ahmad

ANTON ENUS (LOCAL)
Anton Enus, a broadcast journalist with more than 20 years’ experience, has been presenting SBS Television World News Australia bulletins since 1999. He began his career at the South African national broadcaster, SABC, as a radio news reporter. He moved on to become a parliamentary reporter, current affairs producer, TV news reporter and TV presenter, often anchoring the morning news show Good Morning South Africa. Anton was part of the team that covered South Africa’s historic return to democracy in 1994 and, as specialist news writer for the SABC, he also filed stories from Rwanda, Burundi, Zaire, Uganda, Mozambique and Zimbabwe. Anton spent seven years as a correspondent for CNN World Report, a global news program, where he won Best International Report for his story marking the 25th anniversary of Chris Barnard's pioneering heart transplant. Before leaving South Africa, Anton presented the SABC’s major evening national news bulletin. In addition to reading the news, Anton hosts special SBS news events such as the 2003 nightly Iraq War program, the live studio debate on the Cronulla race riots and the annual Walkley Awards for excellence in journalism. His favourite authors are JM Coetzee, Sebastian Faulks and William Wharton.

also appearing at...
80: Private Lives, Public Histories
282: The First Time
207: But I Don’t Like You