Sydney Writers' Festival

JANE PALFREYMAN (LOCAL)
Jane Palfreyman is a Publisher at Allen & Unwin.

appearing at...
341: From Pen to Reader
297: Editing Today

TONI PATTERSON (LOCAL)
Toni Patterson is a 33-year-old trained winemaker and Master of Wine and the only Australian woman to have won the prestigious international Madame Lily Bollinger medal for excellence in tasting. Toni’s impeccable credentials make her an unbeatable guide to the dazzling choice of wines available. Her accessible approach makes reading about and selecting Australian wine easier than ever.

Toni Paterson was fascinated by aromas and flavours from an early age, and knew at 14 she would work in the wine industry. Describing her passion as verging on obsession, Toni blind-tastes tea, coffee, croissants and cinnamon – among other things. She also has a keen nose for foods and beverages, which are tainted or sub-standard.

While describing her life as fairly normal, Toni is tasting wine before most of us have finished morning tea. Toni loves reading about the history of food and enjoys cooking a meal for friends and family. She is based in Sydney where she works as a wine consultant and writer.

appearing at...
260: Cockfighter’s Ghost Wine Tasting with Toni Patterson

DARRIO PHILLIPS (LOCAL)
Darrio Phillips originates from Ohio, USA. He came to Australia in the early 1980s where he was one of the original hip-hop dancers in Australia. He has choreographed and danced for Peter Andre and Selwyn, and for tours that include Kylie Minogue, Madonna, Bobby Brown and RUMBA.

He is the first hip-hop dance teacher in Australia, having educated several generations of Sydney students and brought hip-hop dance into the catholic and state education departments curriculum as an acceptable style of dance for sport and PE. He runs his own successful hip-hop dance school – the first in Sydney to be purely devoted to street dance.

www.darriostreet.com

appearing at...
263: Hip Hop Projections 3

JUDE PHILP (LOCAL)
Jude Philp is Senior Curator of the Macleay Museum.

appearing at...
161: Museum

OLIVER PHOMMAVANH (LOCAL)
Oliver Phommavanh is an Australian-Thai writer for children. His short story is included in Growing Up Asian in Australia. He is also a primary school teacher and stand up comedian.

appearing at...
279: Growing Up Asian in Australia

MARCELLA POLAIN (INTERSTATE)
Marcella Polain was born in Singapore and immigrated to Perth when she was two years old, with her Armenian mother and Irish father. She has a background in theatre and screen writing, and now lectures in the writing program at Edith Cowan University.

In 1993, she was a founding member of the Web poetry and performance events in Perth. She was founding WA editor for the national poetry journal Blue Dog, and has been poetry editor for Westerly and the WA journal Indigo.

Her first poetry collection, Dumbstruck, won the Anne Elder Prize and her second, Each Clear Night, was short-listed for the West Australian Premier’s Poetry Prize.

She completed her PhD at the University of WA in 2006. Her first novel, The Edge of the World, based on her family’s survival of the Armenian Genocide and developed from her thesis, was released in 2007. It won the University’s Higher Degree by Research prize for publication in the category of Creative Works and was short-listed for a 2008 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize.

She has recently completed a third poetry collection with the working title of Therapy like Fish, which will be published in 2008 as part of a new and selected.

Marcella Polain’s participation in Sydney Writers’ Festival is supported by Fremantle Press.

appearing at...
99: Poetry International
179: Families Through Generations
211: Readings from the 2008 Commonwealth Prize Shortlist
245: From Poetry to Prose

PETER POLITES (LOCAL)
Peter Polites was born Panayioti Polites but unfortunately for him the nurses couldn't pronounce that. In his 28 years he has gone to art school, worked for a Senator and a porno book shop, directed two short films, one long play and developed numerous cut throat community cultural development projects. This is the 3rd time his work has appeared in Westside and credits Bankstown Youth Development Service for his artistic "growth".

appearing at...
285: Westside at the Wharf

MICHAEL POLLAN (INTERNATIONAL)
Michael Pollan has been writing about the places where human and natural worlds intersect: food, agriculture, gardens, drugs and architecture for the past 20 years. The Omnivore's Dilemma was named one of the 10 best books of 2006 by both The New York Times and The Washington Post. He is also the author of The Botany of Desire, A Place of my Own and Second Nature.

A long-time contributing writer to The New York Times Magazine, Pollan is also the Knight Professor of Journalism at UC Berkeley. His writing on food and agriculture has won numerous awards, including the Reuters/World Conservation Union Global Award in Environmental Journalism, the James Beard Award, and the Genesis Award from the American Humane Association.

In Defence of Food: The Myth of Nutrition and the Pleasures of Eating was released this year.
www.michaelpollan.com

appearing at...
155: The Simple Life
212: Michael Pollan in Conversation with Caroline Baum
251: Cafe Scientific: The Future of Food

JACOB POLLEY (INTERNATIONAL)
Jacob Polley was born in Carlisle in 1975. His first book of poetry, The Brink, was published in 2003 and his second, Little Gods, in December 2006. As well as poems, Jacob has also written the short film Flickerman and the Ivory-skinned Woman with the director, Ian Fenton.

Jacob was selected as one of the Next Generation of British poets in 2004. In 2002 he won an Eric Gregory Award and the Radio 4/Arts Council ‘First Verse’ Award. He was the Visiting Fellow Commoner in Creative Arts at Trinity College, Cambridge, 2005-07.

appearing at...
99: Poetry International
119: Nightwriting Live Performance

PETER POSTLETHWAITE (INTERNATIONAL)
Peter Postlethwaite won an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his performance as Giuseppe Conlon in Jim Sheridan's controversial film In the Name of the Father.

A veteran of both stage and screen, his most recent motion picture roles include Dragonheart, The Usual Suspects, Waterland, Brassed Off, Romeo + Juliet, Last of the Mohicans, Alien, Hamlet, To Kill a Priest and Distant Voices, Still Lives.

A former member of England's Royal Shakespeare Company, Pete Postlethwaite's stage credits include The Rise and Fall of Little Voice, Richard II, The Fair Maid of the West, Macbeth, King Lear and The Duchess of Malfi. He also acted in repertory at the Manchester Royal Exchange, the Bristol Old Vic and the Liverpool Everyman.

In 2004 Pete Postlethwaite was made an OBE.

appearing at...
51: Liyarn Ngarn

GRACE PUNDYK (LOCAL)
Grace Pundyk has spent more than a decade indulging her passion for travel by moving between the Middle East, Asia, Africa, Australia and Europe. In addition to writing for travel publishers Lonely Planet and Marshall Cavendish her work has also appeared in numerous magazines, journals and newspapers around the world. Her book is The Honey Spinner.

Grace Pundyk’s participation in Sydney Writers’ Festival is supported by Murdoch Books.

appearing at...
88: The Honey Spinner
176: Traveller’s Tales

ALICE PUNG (INTERSTATE)
Alice Pung is a writer and lawyer whose work has appeared in The Age, Good Weekend, The Monthly and Meanjin.

Her first book, Unpolished Gem, has become a national bestseller. It was shortlisted for the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards, the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards, the Age Book of the Year Award, the Colin Roderick Award, the Westfield/Waverley Library Award for Literature and won the 2007 Newcomer of the Year Award in the Australian Book Industry Awards. It was also selected for Books Alive 2007 and voted one of Victoria’s top 5 summer reads in the State Library of Victoria's Summer Read program.

Most recently, Alice has edited the anthology Growing Up Asian in Australia.

appearing at...
229: Writing and Research
259: Launch: Growing Up Asian in Australia
279: Growing Up Asian in Australia