Chris Abbott (p.64) lives on the NSW Mid North Coast. He is currently working on collecting prose and poetry for possible publication.
Bernadette Bellmunt (p.106) is an emerging artist living in Melbourne. She enjoys painting, drawing and taking photos. Having recently graduated from the Bachelor of Fine Art and spending the past year abroad, she plans to continue to pursue her artistic endeavours and explore the world which inspires her practise.
Laura Brinson (p.183) has toured country festivals with one-act plays, dug for gold in W.A. and walked the trail to Machu Picchu. She is a seamstress currently living in Melbourne. Her prose and poetry have appeared in Regime, Social Alternatives, n-Scribe, and Page Seventeen.
Lachlan Brown (pp.107, 108, 109 & 124) is a third year Psychology student and self-taught photographer. He is interested in people, their interactions and the way they mark the environment. He mainly shoots digital but occasionally shoots 35mm monochrome.
Trevor Brown (p.127) is a freelance writer/artist and is now producing digital content as a producer. Since getting off the streets in mid-2013 he has been studying while also advocating for those who are still homeless.
Ron Burrows (p.28) is the author of The Postie and the Priest, a biography about the gregarious Father Bob Maguire. Burrows is studying a Bachelor of Professional and Creative Writing at Victoria University, Footscray Park.
Margaret Campbell’s (p.157) writing includes poetry, short stories, YA novels and oral history. For the last 23 years she has worked with young writers and conducts, with Wyndham Council, a young writers competition, now international. Post MA she is recording a second volume of oral histories recording migration to Werribee/Wyndham.
Mel Charters is Offset Sixteen’s Managing Editor and is currently studying at Victoria University.
Sherryl Clark (p.129) has been a writer and teacher of writing for more than 25 years. Her first love is poetry. She is currently a PhD student at Victoria University, studying and writing fairytales.
Maree Collie (pp.25, 75 & 197) would like to write children’s books. There is something about the smile and look of fascination on a child’s face when they are absorbed in some fantastic story.
Michael Crane (p.21) is a writer and activist. He has been published in Offset, Overland, and Best Australian Poems 2011, 2014 and 2015. He organised poetry for Melbourne Writer’s Festival 2007 – 2012.
Jessi Dillon is Offset Sixteen’s Submissions Editor and is in the final year of a Bachelor of Professional and Creative Writing. She loves to laugh, learn, explore and experience new things. She is passionate about writing, and does it whenever she gets the chance. Her work consists of feature articles, fiction, opinion and the occasional poem.
Jane Downing’s (p.153) stories have been published in journals including Southerly, The Big Issue, Overland, and previously in Offset.
Tug Dumbly (pp.33, 130 & 190) has performed his poems, songs and monologues on radio (as a regular on both Triple J and ABC702), in schools, and at venues and festivals both in Australia and abroad. He has released two spoken work CDs through the ABC, twice won the Banjo Paterson Prize for comic verse, twice won the Nimbin World Performance Poetry Cup, and last year was runner up in the Josephine Ulrick Poetry Prize.
Eliseanna (pp.118, 119, 120, 121 & 124) is a creative artist who is aspiring to become an illustrator for children’s books as well as journey into the world of art therapy. Her preferred medium is painting with ink, but she also enjoys sculpture and print making.
Katelin Farnsworth (p.66) is a writer from Melbourne. She won the Rachel Funari prize for fiction in 2015. She’s had work published in Award Winning Australian Writing, Tincture Journal, Flushing the Square, Voiceworks, Writers Bloc, and The Victorian Writers. She studies creative writing.
Jean Flynn (pp.41 & 173) is a freelance writer and graphic designer based in regional Victoria. Her work has appeared in The Age, The Huffington Post and Mamamia, as well as several anthologies.
Fred the Alien productions (p.125) is a multi-platform arts collective who combine their creative passions and talents to make videos, podcasts and stage plays. The team consists of Michael R. Lister, Bethany Griffiths, Phillip Hunting, Fulya Kantarmaci, Wayne Stellini, and Ben Campbell.
Geoff Goodfellow (pp.39 & 132) has been writing and publishing poetry for thirty years. He supports the development of young talent and was published in early editions of Offset.
Jonathan Griffiths (p.94) was born in New Zealand in the 1950s, hence his depressive outlook on life. He’s written songs, plays, short stories, a short film, one and a half novels and a handful of poems. Some of them are funny.
Jeff Guess (pp.63 & 178) was born in SA and has taught English in secondary schools, TAFE, and UniSA. His first book Leaving Maps (1984) was hailed as ‘a major collection’. He has since had ten collections, the most recent Autumn in Cantabile (2011). Jeff has written three textbooks on poetry, edited many anthologies and won numerous prizes.
Stephanie Hanna (pp.110, 111, 112, 113 & 124) is a third year Creative Arts Industries student at Victoria University. She majors in Creative Writing and Visual Arts, but Visual Arts will always be her favourite. Her preferred medium is pencil on paper, but she has recently found interest in digital art. She aspires to one day be a curator, and to pursue this career overseas.
Craig Henderson (p.167) is a full-time student and a part-time child wrangler. Craig is currently ghost writing a memoir, while attempting to hold back the tide of fiction within and find time to go trainspotting with his youngest son.
Pauline Henry (p.88) completed a Diploma of Professional and Creative Writing at Victoria University in 2014. Her preferred writing genre is historical fiction and she is working towards publishing a book about a movement of aristocratic women in Victorian London who created societies like the Female Middle Class Emigration Society.
Brian Howley (p.172) is a published author and poet. He loves dancing with words.
Ben Iser (p.58) is the co-owner of a second-hand bookshop and occasional short story writer. He has been compared to Bernard Black only without the Irish accent.
Rhiannon Jackson-Berry is in her final year of a Bachelor of Professional and Creative Writing at Victoria University, and joined the Offset team in the role of Multimedia Editor. A book lover and horror enthusiast, she likes nothing more than settling down with a cup of tea and a good apocalypse story.
Rumi Komonz (p.46) was shortlisted for the Deborah Cass Migrant Writer Award in 2016, and also won several Japanese literature awards. She has facilitated a bilingual writing group, ANE Haiku at Writer’s Victoria since 2012. She compiled and edited the 21st Anthology of Canterbury Writers (2014), featuring haiku in several community languages.
Karlein Kwong (pp.117 & 124) is in a final year of Masters of Speech Pathology. She enjoys the creative aspects of life such as novel writing, music composition and photography. She likes shooting landscapes, still-life and macro. Her goals are to publish a fantasy trilogy and take her photography somewhere.
Arlo Langham (p.185) began a Bachelor of Creative Arts Industries immediately after finishing high school, lucky to achieve the necessary grades. He started out raw but quickly discovered that his strength is in writing for screen and performance. This knack for visual storytelling influences all of his written work.
Benjamin Laut (p.22) is a Melbourne based film maker/writer. As a founding member of Last Call Film Productions, his short films have won several Best Tertiary awards in festivals around Melbourne. As an Offset alumnus, his work has been featured in Offset 11, 13 and 15.
Jason Lie (pp.20 & 85) studies Professional Writing and Editing at Victoria University. He also works as one of the editors for Hyde magazine. After he graduates from TAFE, he hopes to have an active poetry blog that he may develop into a poetry collection. Free verse poetry is his preferred form.
Larissa MacFarlane (p.122) is a local artist, working across printmaking, street art and a community art practice. Her work is inspired by the urban industrial landscapes of Melbourne’s west as well as by her experience of disability and illness to investigate ideas of belonging and place, healing and change.
Magan Magan’s (p.54) main mode of expression is poetry. He aspires to publish books of poems.
Janet Mann (p.72) is a librarian who is about to retire and is a serious book addict. She is a member of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. Janet especially enjoys writing short stories, flash fiction, and poetry for adults and YA readers.
Tiana Mann is Offset Sixteen’s Editor and Events Officer and is in her final year of a Bachelor of Professional and Creative Writing. She is an aspiring copyeditor who dreams of editing fiction novels in a publishing house. She wishes to travel the world, all the while finding new and interesting things to read that she can have a part in putting out to the world.
Stephanie Mariani (p.179) is a primary school teacher. Her family are the inspiration behind her writing.
Nicholas McKay (p.56) is a video gaming geek, an anime addict, an A-Pop enthusiast, an occasional cook, and a philosophical thinker. He is completing a Master of Teaching at Melbourne University, with aspirations to teach secondary students. He is a published poet, writer and journalist, working part-time in the publishing industry.
Damen Mendel (p.128) is a singer/songwriter and his background is German/Nigerian. His music style is somewhere between Folk, Roots and Soul. He teaches music to disadvantaged youth in a Youth Detention Centre. He is currently studying Bachelor of Music in his final year at Victoria University.
Audrey Molloy (p.138) lives in Sydney where she works as a part- time writer and a full-time chef, chauffeur and washerwoman to three spirited children. She has recently had poems published in the Australian Poetry Journal and F(r)iction literary journal in the US.
Elizabeth Morris (p.76) studies Professional Writing and Editing at Victoria University. She writes poetry and YA novels and is currently working on her first novel. She aspires to one day become a published author.
Lucia Nardo (p.144) writes fiction and non-fiction and she has published a range of both forms. She teaches at Victoria Polytechnic and is currently undertaking a PhD in creative writing.
Matthew Naqvi (p.160) is a writer, editor and writing group facilitator. His writing has appeared in Fight Australia!, Stereo Stories, Footy Almanac, Little Raven, and Offset. Since receiving an emerging writer grant at the Hume City Council Arts Awards, Matthew has been writing a young adult novel.
Nadia Niaz (p.170) is a writer and academic from Melbourne via Pakistan and several other places. She has always written poetry and short stories but has now started work on a novel. Her areas of interest and research are multilingualism and creative expression across languages.
Stephen Nichols (pp.165 & 184) is a playwright who loves to write poetry and short stories. His plays have been produced at various venues around Melbourne and Sydney. He is currently working towards publishing a book of poems and short fiction.
Alexander Nuccio (p.126) is sometimes likened to a cat.
Leah Plotz (p.71) is a Norwegian-American working as a travel writer and copywriter. Since earning her post-grad diploma in Communication at Victoria University, she often dreams about the wild Australian landscape and her time in Melbourne for inspiration.
Elsa Ramirez (pp.116 & 124) is an art student who wishes to be an art teacher. She loves drawing on the train, at home or any spare moment she has. She loves to draw or paint with a variety of media, at the moment she’s working with water colours and drawing sea animals. She also loves the finish water colour gives to drawings so wants to explore this medium to better her skills as an artist.
Liam Richards (pp.36 & 194) is currently a student of Professional and Creative Writing at Victoria University. He enjoys reading, writing and playing video games. He hopes to one day teach English Literature while writing and editing professionally on the side.
Zachary Riley (pp.48, 148 & 192) writes poetry and short stories. For the moment, writing is the cheapest habit he has gotten himself into. Zachary hopes to continue writing for years to come.
Jack Rintoul (p.200) is a writer and filmmaker from Melbourne.
Kristen Roberts (p.143) is a kindergarten teacher and writer from Melbourne’s western suburbs. Her poetry and short stories have been published in journals and anthologies, such as Australian Love Poems, Quadrant and Page Seventeen. Her small collection The Held and the Lost was published by The Emma Press.
Tracey Rolfe (p.140) is a freelance writer and editor who teaches Professional Writing and Editing at Victoria Polytechnic.
Sakura-kai (p.150) is an Australian group of Japanese war-brides and volunteer supporters, meeting annually at different locations. 15 Haiku by 15 different authors was compiled and edited by Rumi Komonz, who facilitated their haiku-writing activity during their trip to Sydney in 2015. Sakura-kai will travel to Victoria in October 2016.
Shereen Siwpersad (p.166) is an English Literature graduate residing in the Netherlands. She loves to write, and is particularly passionate about poetry. At the moment she is completing her second degree in Literary Studies as it is her ambition to become a college teacher of literature.
Paul South (p.86) is a stand-up comedian, copywriter and poet. He lives in the bush near Castlemaine. He recently began working at Castlemaine Cemetery, which is great for comedy material.
Wayne Stellini (pp.26, 53 & 198) is a Melbourne writer and poet whose work has appeared in Offset and Short and Twisted, has performed at the Emerging Writer’s Festival (2015), and was shortlisted for the Monash Undergraduate Prize for Creative Writing (2016).
Raquel Stevens is Offset Sixteen’s Editor and Designer and is in her final year of a Bachelor of Communication, specialising in Professional Writing. Her aim is to be an editor and work in the book publishing industry after finishing her degree. Raquel is also the Social Media and Distribution Manager of Hyde magazine.
Julee Stillman (p.136) lives in a semi-rural outer-Melbourne township. She is an award-winning short story writer, including the State Library of Victoria Writes of Spring competition. Julee enjoys reading and taking long walks with her dog. Currently she is writing a romance novel.
Alexander Stimpson (p.115) is a fine arts student at RMIT, working in the field of new media and digital art. His practice explores the way that we interact with technology in the digital age. His dream is to one day create an entirely digital gallery space.
Joshua Venn (p.78) is a copywriter living and working in Melbourne. He enjoys writing short fiction and creative non-fiction inspired by the places he visits and the people he meets.
Khrys Wardant (p.114) came to Victoria University to study art after around eight years of working in various fields including mental health, after deciding that she wanted to pursue a career in art. Khrys aspires to eventually become a tattoo artist however she enjoys working with acrylic, ink and watercolour. She is inspired by the combination of beauty and the macabre.
Kim Waters (p.34) is a Melbourne teacher who writes poetry. She is currently completing a Diploma of Visual Art at LaTrobe College of Arts. She is interested in writing about art and travel.
Trav Z’Anger’s (pp.123, 124 & cover image) art ranges from finely detailed ink illustrations to large abstract acrylic paintings. He loves exploring different mediums and different techniques, always trying to perfect his work so he can then make it imperfect.