The Book Club

Toni Jordan is the author of six novels including the international best-seller Addition, Nine Days, which was awarded Best Fiction at the 2012 Indie Awards, and Our Tiny, Useless Hearts (2016), which was longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award and for the Voss Literary Award. Toni holds a bachelor of science and a PhD in creative arts. Her most recent novel is Dinner with the Schnabels (2022).

Stephanie Trigg is a professor in English at the University of Melbourne. She has published widely and has written or edited several books on medieval and Australian literature. She also publishes a blog.

Stephanie holds an Honours Degree and a PhD in English from the Department of English at the University of Melbourne and a B.Litt. degree in Philosophy and Social Theory from Melbourne. She was awarded the University of Melbourne’s Woodward Medal for Research Excellence in the Humanities and Social Sciences in 2004, and the Faculty of Arts Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2003. In 2005, she was Visiting Hurst Professor in the Department of English and American Literature at Washington University in Saint Louis. In 2009 she is Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania, and Distinguished Lecturer, New York University. She was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities in 2006, and in 2008 received the Patricia Grimshaw Award for Excellence in Mentoring, and an Award for Teaching Excellence in Arts and Humanities from the Australian Teaching and Learning Council.

Current projects include a cultural history of the Order of the Garter (funded by a Discovery Grant from the Australian Research Council); a collaborative project on Australian medievalism with Louise D'Arcens (University of Wollongong), Andrew Lynch (University of Western Australia) and John Ganim (University of California, Riverside), also funded by the ARC; and a book on the theory of medievalism, being jointly written with Thomas Prendergast (College of Wooster, Ohio).

Sean Dooley is a Melbourne author who works as a television comedy writer. He has a weekly spot with 3RRR Breakfasters and regularly contributes to The Age and ABC radio about birds, the environment, sport and, well, anything really.

His greatest claim to fame is that in 2002 he broke the Australian birdwatching record for seeing the most species in one year.

He then wrote about it in The Big Twitch, thereby outing himself as a nerd. He’s part of the writing team for the ABC’s hugely successful Spicks and Specks.

Alan Brough was born in New Zealand and is quite a bit older than he'd like to be. Alan has always loved books and, from an early age, wanted to be a writer. Then he and his Dad went to see Star Wars and Alan decided that, actually, he really, really, really, really, really wanted to be an actor.

After having been an actor for a while Alan realised there wasn't that much work for a 6'4" guy with a slightly lopsided face and thick curly hair so he tried his hand at directing, broadcasting, composing, dancing (true!), singing and, in an unexpected turn of events, being a professional music nerd.

Recently, he got around to being a writer.

One day he hopes to have a bio that includes phrases like 'bestselling', 'award-winning' and 'so successful that he recently bought a solid gold toilet' but, until then, he's just happy to look at his copy of Charlie and the War Against the Grannies and think: 'Cool! I wrote a book!'