Kenneth Cook was born in Sydney. Wake in Fright, which drew on his time as a journalist in Broken Hill, was first published in 1961 when Cook was thirty-two. It was published in England and America, translated into several languages, and a prescribed text in schools. Cook wrote twenty-one books in a variety of genres, and was well known in film circles as a scriptwriter and independent film-maker. He died in 1987 at the age of fifty-seven.
Peter Temple has worked extensively as a journalist and editor for newspapers and magazines in several countries. He has won five Ned Kelly Awards for his novels, and won the world’s most prestigious crimewriting prize, the Duncan Lawrie Dagger. In 2010 he was awarded Australia’s greatest writing prize, the Miles Franklin Literary Award. His books are published in more than twenty countries.
David Stratton is co-presenter of At the Movies on ABC television and film critic for the Australian. He has also served as a President of the International Critics Jury for the Cannes and Venice Film Festivals, written three books and is currently lecturing in Film History at the University of Sydney.
Peter Temple is widely regarded as one of Australia’s finest writers, and his novels have been published in 20 countries. During his lifetime he worked extensively as a journalist and editor, before teaching editing and media studies at a number of universities. His novels, among them the Jack Irish series, Truth, The Broken Shore and An Iron Rose, are celebrated as some of the best crime writing in English. Temple died in March 2018.
