A Country Too Far

Thomas Keneally was born in 1935 and his first novel was published in 1964. Since then he has written a considerable number of novels and non-fiction works. His novels include The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, Schindler's List and The People's Train. He has won the Miles Franklin Award, the Booker Prize, the Los Angeles Times Prize, the Mondello International Prize and has been made a Literary Lion of the New York Public Library, a Fellow of the American Academy, recipient of the University of California gold medal, and is now the subject of a 55 cent Australian stamp.

He has held various academic posts in the United States, but lives in Sydney.

Rosie Scott was an internationally published and award-winning writer who published six novels and a collection each of short stories, poems and essays. Her play was the basis for a film which won several international awards.

She and Thomas Keneally co-edited a PEN anthology of writers in detention, earning them a nomination for the Human Rights Medal and helping to gain PEN the Community Human Rights Award. She was appointed permanent member of the Council of Australian Society of Authors, and was a recipient of the Sydney PEN Award and a Lifetime Member of PEN. She was a co-founder of Women for Wik. In 2012 she was nominated as one of the 100 most influential people in Sydney in Education – for her mentoring, teaching and the work she did in public education about asylum seekers.

Her novel Faith Singer was on the list of 50 Essential Reads by Contemporary Authors compiled by the Orange Prize committee, the Guardian and the Hay Festival.