Evan Clarry began his career writing and directing the short film Mate, which went on to win the Best Short Film at Flickerfest and Best Screenplay at the 1998 AFI Awards. Evan Clarry’s directing credits include feature films Blurred and Under the Radar, various television series including Lightning Point, Mako Mermaids, the Emmy nominated Mortified and AACTA Award winning series and worldwide Netflix hit, The Bureau of Magical Things. He is also an Awgie winning screenwriter who has written many hours of television including for Mako Mermaids and The Bureau of Magical Things. He has most recently wrapped on Season 1 of Rock Island Mysteries for Nickelodeon.
Neil is an award winning playwright and has had 35 plays produced in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane and Chicago. These include Alive at Williamstown Pier, The Campaign, Personality Games, which he co-wrote with Prof. Gordon Parker from the Black Dog Institute in Sydney, The Trial of Adolf Eichmann, Nina Simone Black Diva Power, An Evening With Billy Holiday, Groucho, The Broken Streamer, Songs From The Kop.
He won the Griffin Theatre Award for the best new writing for theatre in 1999 and was short - listed for the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award in 2001. He won the Supreme Court of Victoria Aspire Award in 2017 for his contribution to psychiatry in the theatre.
Neil was the State Member of Parliament for Melbourne from 1988-1999 and Shadow Attorney- General for three years. Neil is a public advocate on mental illness and has spoken extensively about it in Australia and overseas. He was the first politician in Australia to publicly admit to having a mental illness namely bi-polar mood disorder.
He has written three books “Colonel Surry’s Insanity” and his memoir “Stability in Mind”. His latest work is “Trials and Tribulations in Community Law”
Neil set up the Flemington and Kensington Community Legal Service in 1980 and worked as a community lawyer there until 1987.
Tim is an award winning film director whose VCA graduate film, ‘Swimming To The Boy’, won him the film school’s best director and script awards and secured the Emerging Talent Award at the Australian Critics Circle Awards. Tim has also been a four time Tropfest finalist winning four awards with his film ‘Fences’. He has had his shorts screen at numerous festivals around the world including: Aspen, Rotterdam, Palm Springs, Flickerfest, St Kilda and Adelaide Film Festivals. Having received funding from Film Victoria and ScreenWest multiple times Tim has now made the leap to long form storytelling. His debut feature is set to be ‘Truth To Power’, the story of Andrew Wilkie, the only Intelligence Officer to call out the lies about the Iraq War before the war began.
Koraly Dimitriadis is a writer, actor and film and theatre maker. She is the author of poetry books Love and F**k Poems and Just Give Me The Pills, which together form the basis of her theatre show “I say the wrong things all the time”. In 2019 Koraly was awarded the UNESCO City of Literature residency in Krakow for her fiction manuscript, Divided Island. She has also received mentorship from Christos Tsiolkas on this project. Koraly’s columns have been published across the Australian media with international publications in The Washington Post and The Independent (UK). Koraly produces, directs, writes and acts in films of her poems. She received an Australia Council ArtStart grant for The Good Greek Girl Film Project, her film Best Friend shortlisted for the Australian Online Video Awards in 2017. Koraly produced and acted in her first unscripted pilot feature Koraly (a mockumentary): I wonder if they’ll make the TV show which was broadcast on Channel 31 along with her short films. Koraly has undertaken acting training with Olga Aristodemou, Aleksi Vellis and Peter Andrikidis.
Vanessa de Largie is first and foremost a writer. However, she is also a freelance journalist, an award-winning actress and author and the sex columnist at Maxim Magazine. Vanessa also pens a regular column for the iconic British/Australian magazine — The Spectator.
Throughout her career, Vanessa’s written over 1000 columns published in approximately sixty media outlets worldwide. Her writing primarily focuses on fierce female sexuality and gender politics. Vanessa’s columns and feature articles have appeared in:
The Spectator, Maxim Magazine, Penthouse Magazine, GQ Magazine, The Huff Post (US), RendezView , News.com.au, iNews (UK), Writers Weekly (US), The Daily Telegraph, The Courier Mail, The Vocal, Quadrant Magazine, Daily Life AU, New Matilda, Kinkly, MamaMia, SBS, Rebelle Society, Cara Sutra Sexuality Magazine (UK), The Herald Sun, Perth Now, The F Word (UK), Thought Catalog, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, Milk Bar Magazine, The Australia Times, The Mercury, NT News, SHESAID, The Hit Job, The Advertiser, Synergy Magazine, Topic Media, Medium, Stuff.co.nz, YourTango (US), Archer Magazine, Tuck Magazine, The Fix (US), The Canberra Times, Endo Issues, In Between Hangovers and many more.
Vanessa is the author of three memoirs:
Her erotic memoir Tantric Afternoons was published by Parisian publisher Hampress. The book received a rave review by acclaimed author Kate Holden, who likened de Largie’s writing to Anais Nin's.
In 2015, Vanessa's #1 Amazon BestsellerDon’t Hit Me! was picked up by Seattle publisher Booktrope and released as a paperback and ebook globally. Don't Hit Me!'' received five-star-reviews from the prestigious Midwest Book Review , the San Francisco Book Review and the #1 Amazon Hall of Fame Reviewer in The UK.. It was the recipient of a Global eBook Award (Bronze), Readers Favorite Award (Silver) and Honorable Mention Award at the London Book Festival.
Vanessa self published her rape memoir Without My Consent in 2016, it went on to win an Honorable Mention Award at The New York Book Festival. On top of her books and columns, Vanessa wrote a one woman show about her journey through rape which she performed at the Tristan Bates Theatre in the West End of London in 2017.
Dick Gross is a Melbourne based writer of books and a composer of musicals.
Dick is the author author of 5 books and co-author of another (four nonfiction and two works of fiction) on divergent topics of finance and godlessness. Money for Jam, How to spread it and not make a mess, 1990 Mandarin Australia Tricontinental, 1995 Melbourne University Press (co-author) Godless Gospel, 2000 Pluto Books Jesus, Judas and Mordy, Three good Jewish boys in Jerusalem, Self-published in 2005 Death by Elegy, 2011 Melbourne University Custom Books Zac, Hats in Cool Town, 2014 Garratt Publishing He was the writer in residence at Bayside Council.
He has won two national and state awards for Public Relations campaigns. Dick has extensive media experience as commentator including Channel 9, SBS, 774 and 3AK. He has been a finance writer with The Age and the Australian Jewish News. “Godless Gross” was a blog on www.nationaltimes.com.au/blogs commenced in 2009 and attracted more comments than any other blog in Australia (50,000 to 2013). www.smh.com.au/national/most- commented-stories-of-2012-20121219-2bm0y.html
He has written and composed several musicals including Not Finished With You Yet a risqué and hilarious product The show had a 7 week run as part of the 2023 Melbourne International Comedy Festival.
Death by Elegy performed in 2014 by Emotionworks to acclaim: “... a delightful surprise where tragic matters such as death and a belief in the afterlife are considered in an innovative, vulnerable and refreshing way. Who would have thought that a play about death could be so funny?”
Father and Son – a musical exploration of this fraught relationship performed at Fringe 2007
Brendan Hennessy began his career as a ghost, writing speeches and media statements spoken by and attributed to others before moving into screenwriting.
His words have been published in almost every Australian newspaper under many different names. He brings this knack for writing in other voices to the screenwriting craft.
Brendan holds a Master of Communication from RMIT University (with Distinction) and is a graduate of the school's Advanced Diploma of Professional Screenwriting program, where his short script was selected for production. Upon graduating, he also received the RMIT Screenwriting Departure Fellowship Award.
Perhaps his proudest achievement was being among the first to be awarded a pen licence in primary school for his near-perfect cursive.
Today Brendan writes drama, comedy, dramedies, social sci-fi and palpitation inducing thrillers. Boiled down, his stories are about relationships.
Sunny Leunig is a Melbourne based Filmmaker, writer/performer and composer.
He has directed music videos for Paul Kelly, Bag Raiders, Courtney Barnett, Dan Sultan and many other notable Australian musicians. He received an ARIA Award nomination for Best Director for Courtney Barnett Elevator Operator, plus numerous other awards including J Award and St. Kilda Film Festival.
His book 'The Book of Uninspiring Quotes" was published by Affirm Press in 2016. He has also written and contributed to other publications such as Dear Dad (Hatchette) People of Letters (Penguin), and has a regular parody astrology column at quarterly publication The Stick (Love Your Sister).
His theatre show A Guide to Unhappiness sold out Adelaide Cabaret Festival and Melbourne Fringe Festival. As a magician he has performed at festivals across Australia. He has hosted his own show on Triple R, co-presented television music show The Story So Far.
As a musician composer he has written music for feature films, toured the world in bands and has written for many television projects including MTV US production Faking it.
Lulu McClatchy is a sort after comedy writer, Writing for her own stand up show as well as sketch comedy and TV series here in Australia and in the UK. She has also written weekly articles in the UK for Smash hits which included comedy Pop updates, beauty blogs and comedy fashion articles. Lulu wrote many live TV shows in the UK including Live and Kicking for the BBC and Take the Mike for ITV which included content for hosting and sketches. Lulu was asked by the BBC to write her own sitcom which was aired on the BBC simply titled SuperGirly. Lulu currently has two feature films and a series she has co-written with her writing partner Perri Cummings. She is currently writing a black comedy thriller TOOK, a Feature Film that is in development with a UK company.
Author, ex Detective and Screenwriter. At 24 years Colin McLaren joined the Police Force for two decades of the most volatile times in Australian history. In no time, he was selected to join the elite crime squads, investigating the Mr Bigs of crime. He turned his hand to undercover work, buying drugs, guns and scams that sent dozens of criminals to prison, for a long holiday. Colin would go on to become Australia’s most experienced task force detective. His investigations took him around the globe. It wasn’t long before Colin would stir worry among the underworld. He suffered death threats, once, an attempt to nail-bomb his house and another by a gang that executed two cops as a pay back. For three years Colin disappeared, surfacing in the mafia stronghold region in Australia, in the largest covert police sting in Australian history. He gathered evidence on the upper echelon of the Australian Mafiosi, buying truckloads of drugs and bags of pure cocaine before jailing twenty mafia.
Colin started writing in 2007. He has often drawn from his police experience, to help build the many characters in his books. He is now the author of eight books including the hugely popular: Infiltration, an autobiography of a cop, and JFK: The Smoking Gun a US sensation. He is also a documentary film maker of many American TV series, as well as the narrator and producer of Podcasts, mostly made in USA and Europe. His most recent book – four years in research – is Mafioso, about the origins and spread of the Sicilian mafia, to USA, then the rest of the world. It was voted runner-up from 176 candidates as ‘book-of-the-year’ in Australia. In all, five of his books have had a cinematic or television treatment.
For eight years, Colin has been a judge on the American Emmy awards, selected due to his past work. His category? Best documentary. He has written one other screenplay, under consideration as a feature film.
Biddy O’'Loughlin is a writer, director, actor, singer and filmmaker from Alice Springs.
Biddy wrote a full-length musical at 17 and put it on as an amateur production at her local theatre. The show sold out and was given a second run. In 2011 she wrote, produced, and performed a solo show, The Girl Who Thought She Was Irish, at the Edinburgh International Arts Festival. The show travelled to Belfast, Geneva, Galway, Dublin, Limerick, London, and Montreal. In 2012, she wrote a second solo show, Funny Rabbit, for the Melbourne Fringe.
Biddy has a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Film and Television from the Victorian College of the Arts, the University of Melbourne. After receiving the Lionel Gell Scholarship for excellence from the VCA in 2014, $10,000 became the budget for Biddy’s thesis short – and the price in pounds on her Bandito’s head. A Western called Ten Thousand, the film earned Biddy a Young Director Award in France, 2016. In 2017, Biddy was accepted into the Conservatory Program at The Second City Hollywood. Significant short film credits as writer/director:
THE SHED (Short, 2014)
Australia’s Funniest Shorts, 2016
THESPIANS (Short, 2014)
Australia’s Funniest Shorts, 2016
TEN THOUSAND (Short, 2016)
Young Director Award, France 2016 WINNER Silver Screen Award
Something Somewhere Festival, 2016
A ZOMBIE TOOK MY DINGO (Short, 2019)
Trasharama, 2019 RUNNER UP GOLDEN LOMAX AWARD
Darwin International Film Festival, 2020
NT Travelling Film Festival 2020 and 2021
Dumbo Film Festival, USA 2020
Saint Kilda Film Festival, 2020
Capricornia Film Awards, 2021 NOMINEE
Fist Full of Films, 2022 WINNER Best Short Film
TJ GO HOME (Short, 2019)
Darwin International Film Festival, 2020
Saint Kilda Film Festival, 2020
NT Travelling Film Festival, 2020 and 2021
Capricornia Film Awards, 2021 NOMINEE
Fist Full of Films, 2022 FINALIST
Luke spent most of his twenties as a freelance writer, a private investigator and listening to rock ‘n’ roll. He drinks heavily on occasion, is a half decent musician and his idea of a good time involves a jukebox designed to bleed ears.
Luke’s writing has been recognized by The Inside Film Awards, MTV, The Tracking Board and The International Thriller Awards. His first novel, Dark City Blue was published by Pan Macmillan and is currently in development as a feature film. His second novel, Out of Exile was a finalist for an International Thriller Award in 2015.
Luke’s writing is as much influenced by Billy Idol and Cyndi Lauper as it is by Stephen King and Lee Child. He holds a Master’s Degree in Screenwriting from the Victorian College of the Arts where he graduated at the top of his class and was awarded Screenwriter of the Year. His graduating screenplay, Never Too Late is set for release in 2020 with James Cromwell and Jackie Weaver cast in the leads.
He has absolutely no intention of moving to a shack in the middle of nowhere. He likes bad traffic, noisy neighbours, cheap beer, loud bars and has been occasionally known to howl at the moon.
Finegan Sampson is a Writer/Director from Melbourne Australia. He began his career in film and television as an actor at the age of 4 and has been cast in projects such as television series 'Woodley' and the ‘Bazura Project’ and the Spierig brothers feature film, 'Predestination'. Graduating from Swinburne University with Honours in Film and Television in 2022, Finegan was recently nominated for Young Australian Filmmaker of the Year at Byron Bay Film Festival and won the award for Best Student Film at Australian Independent Film Festival for his graduate short film Teach Me How to Cry which stars acclaimed actors Michala Banas and Lachy Hulme.
Finegan has also most recently written and directed Boy and Bear’s latest music video ‘Strange World”. His debut documentary ‘The Spaghetti Stains’ has also recently been selected for the 2023 Melbourne Documentary Film Festival. In 2019, He founded and is the managing director of Collingwood based production company ‘OneHouse Productions’, a rapidly growing company that he has used as a vessel to direct music videos and commercial work.
Coming from an acting background, his directorial style is identifiable by his interest in the psychology of human beings. Moreover, his work explores the inner workings of human connection and vulnerability. He has the versatility and experience to direct commercial work through to narrative. As well as continuing directing music videos and commercial projects, he is currently in development of his debut feature film.
In his 31-year career as a screenwriter, Mark has created, written, story produced and edited more than 250 hours of live action and animated television for shows such as The Girl From Tomorrow, Let the Blood Run Free, Spellbinder, Pig’s Breakfast, Conspiracy 365, The Adventures of Figaro Pho and Mako Mermaids.
Mark has taught writing at RMIT University and been a script assessor for the Australian Writers’ Guild, Film Victoria, Screen Queensland and Screen Tasmania.
Mark has won three AWGIE awards for screenwriting and the animated film ‘The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello’, for which he wrote the screenplay, was nominated for an Academy Award.
Mark’s most recent credit is as story producer and writer on the children’s fantasy series ‘The Bureau of Magical Things’ which won an ACTAA award in 2018.
Steven J. Tandy is an emerging writer/director from Bacchus Marsh, Regional Victoria. He was awarded the Vice Chancellor's Scholarship to study the Bachelor of Film and Television at Swinburne University where he graduated in 2013. His graduate short film Yesterday’s News screened at several international film festivals and was later picked up for distribution by Gonella Pictures. Tandy also wrote the screenplay for The Suitcase, directed by Natassha Amalia, which won a Platinum Remi for Best Student Short at Houston Worldfest that same year.
In 2015, Tandy began writing his debut feature-film screenplay The Black Dogs We Carry which was one of ten screenplays selected for Open Channel’s Script Development program, Scriptstart. Tandy also won the Short and Sharp Pitching competition held at Open Channel’s Generation Next Conference for his live pitch of the film.
In 2016, Tandy wrote an episode of Open Channel’s Commemorative War Series, Short Back and Sides and began writing several short films, including Junk, a proof of concept short film forThe Black Dogs We Carry, which was later shortlisted for the AWG’s Monte Miller Awards and inducted onto the Pathways Program.
In 2018,Tandy returned to directing short films and music videos and has since worked with some of Australia’s most talented actors and artists including Stonefield, Henry Wagons, Elle Mandalis, Mark Coles Smith, Tim Rogers and Andrew S.Gilbert. Tandy’s 2018 short film The Story premiered Opening Night of St.Kilda Film Festival and was selected for AACTA’S Social Shorts Competition. His 2019 short film Untitled (Saturn Returns) premiered at Peninsula Film Festival where Andrew S. Gilbert was awarded ‘Best Actor’ for his performance in the film.
In 2019, Tandy was inducted onto Film Victoria’s Key Talent Placement Register as a writer. Later that year, Tandy optioned the biography The Hanged Man: The Life and Death of Ronald Ryan written by Dr.Mike Richards and published through Scribe Publications. Tandy is currently adapting the biography into a mini-series.
A graduate of the VCA (Writing), Scott won a Writer’s Guild Award for Theatre, before moving into television where he was again nominated for a Writer’s Guild award in 2008. Scott worked for FremantleMedia from the mid-'90s, until 2006, finishing in London within Fremantle’s World Wide Drama Development department.
He has headed the writing departments of six television dramas, in Australia and overseas. Scott developed and set up Indonesia’s first serial drama, Belahan Hati, before developing and setting up the Polish prime-time drama, Na Wspolnej, a series now in its seventeenth year. In 2016 he created and wrote Moonman for Renegade Films and ABC.
His screenplays have been finalists in Final Draft, and Writer’s Guild Insite awards, with his latest screenplay, The Making of Liam Black, optioned by Spencer McLaren (Red Curtain/Steve Jaggi Co.) in 2019, and set for production in 2020.
Scott’s play, Clipped Wings, was published by Playscripts USA in 2006, and for the past five years he has served as a third-year assessor for the Victorian College of the Arts, Bachelor of Fine Arts (Screenwriting). In 2020, Scott has accepted an offer to study a Masters Degree in Fine Arts, (Writing, via research), with Melbourne University (VCA).
Jay and Shaun Perry are an emerging writer/director duo based in Melbourne, Australia. They grew up in the small mountain town of Olinda, nestled up within the hills of the Dandenong Ranges.
In 2015 Jay completed his Bachelor of Screen Production at Canberra University where he was awarded two Dean’s Excellence awards. His Graduate short film ‘Obsolete’ screened at several international film festivals as well as receiving Best Short at the Middlebury New Filmmakers Festival and Monash Reel Health International Short Film festival.
In 2016 Shaun completed his Bachelor of Professional Writing and Editing at Swinburne University. His ’s short story ‘The Intentions of F. Scott Fitzgerald’ was published in the literary journal ‘Other Terrain’. The short story was then adapted to the screen in 2017, where it found great success in the festival circuit.
The film won seven awards, including ‘Best Achievement in Screenplay’ at the 2018 St Kilda Film Festival and ‘the Canon Encouragement Award’ for Best Young Australian Filmmaker at the Byron Bay International Film Festival. It was also selected as part of AACTA’s Social Shorts Competition.
In 2018, Jay and Shaun began writing their debut feature film, Grandeur, which made the top ten in the 2019 Michael Collyer Memorial Fellowship. It was also included in the top 15% in the Academy’s prestigious Nicholls Fellowship. Later that year Jay was inducted into Film Victoria’s Key Talent Placement Register as a director.
Most recently, Jay and Shaun penned the short screenplay 'Cold Water' which won ‘best short screenplay’ at the popular Cinequest Film Festival in San Francisco. Currently they are in pre-production for Cold Water with the plan to have it completed by mid 2021. They also continue to develop their feature and television projects, focusing primarily on dark comedy and edgy drama genres.
Geoffrey Wright is a writer and director with 26 years of experience working in the UK, Hollywood and Australia. He has directed five feature films: Lover Boy (1989); Romper Stomper (1992); Metal Skin (1993); Cherry Falls (2001); and Macbeth (2007); before creating, story outlining, and executive producing the Logie award-winning Romper Stomper the miniseries (2018) for the Stan streaming service, directing and writing the pilot and episode 2.
Wright has worked with very notable cast over his career, including Noah Taylor; Ben Mendelsohn; Russell Crowe; Brittany Murphy; Candy Clark; Sam Worthington; David Wenham; Lachie Hulme; and Jacqueline Mckenzie (winner of the Best Actress Logie for her work in Romper Stomper the miniseries).
All of Wright’s films have been theatrically released and won national and/or international awards. Romper Stomper the miniseries was streamed throughout the UK, Europe, and the US.
His non-mainstream work includes tutoring at the Melbourne Acting Academy; consulting at the Howard Fine Acting School; and writing, directing and producing over 36 hours of dramatic recreations of crimes and investigative police interviews for Vic Pol; Tas Pol; WA Police; the University of Toronto; Deakin University; and Griffith University. He was nominated for an ATOM teaching award in 2020.
He is currently developing the feature Moral Indemnity for the US production company, Zero Gravity, and the Australian feature Whispering Death.
