2009 MWF authors – the first 3 announced

In case you missed the last couple of e-bulletins from MWF, here are the details of the 3 authors we have announced so far:

Thomas Buergenthal

Thomas Buergenthal

At the age of seven, Thomas Buergenthal was imprisoned in Nazi ghettos and camps, being rescued by Soviet and Polish troops when he was eleven. Separated from his parents in Auschwitz and surviving the ‘Death March’ of 1945 he was miraculously reunited with his mother a year and a half later. The rest of his family and almost all of his friends were killed. After experiencing the turmoil of Europe’s post-war years – from the Battle of Berlin, to a Jewish orphanage in Poland – Buergenthal went to America in the 1950s at the age of seventeen. He eventually became one of the world’s leading experts on international law and human rights. His story of survival and his determination to use law and justice to prevent further genocide is an epic journey through 20th Century history. Buergenthal gives his perspective – as a child – on life in the camps. And, uniquely, he shows how his past has informed his understanding of the modern day war-crimes he sees as a judge. His book, A Lucky Child, is both a special historical document and a great literary achievement, comparable only to Primo Levi’s masterpieces.

Thomas Buergenthal is a leading law scholar with a doctorate from Harvard Law School. After taking up various appointments at Law faculties throughout the US he became the first US judge and later President of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and a member of the UN Human Rights Committee before joining the International Court of Justice in The Hague. In 2008 he was awarded the Justice Prize by The Gruber Foundation. He is the author of more than a dozen books on international law and is the subject of a biography entitled Tommy by Norwegian humanitarian and founder of UNICEF Odd Nansen.

‘an extraordinary story… Heartbreaking and thrilling, it examines what it means to be human, in every good and awful sense’
Author Elizabeth McCracken

Russell Grigg

Russell Grigg

Russell Grigg teaches philosophy and psychoanalytic studies at the Geelong campus of Deakin University. He also practices psychoanalysis in Melbourne. Dr Grigg completed his PhD in the Department of Psychoanalysis founded by Lacan at the University of Paris VIII (Vincennes) where he was also worked as a lecturer. He attended Jacques Lacan’s seminars in its final years and studied under the supervision of Jacques-Alain Miller. As a member of the French psychoanalytic school, Ecole de la Cause freudienne, since its inception he has been involved in the development of Lacanian psychoanalysis in France and internationally. And as a founding member, and current president, of the Lacan Circle of Melbourne he has worked to promote the practice and study of Lacanian psychoanalysis in Australia. Dr Grigg has been closely involved in the translation of Lacan into English, having translated Lacan’s seminars The Psychoses and The Other Side of Psychoanalysis and having collaborated on the first complete translation of Lacan’s Ecrits. His publications have explored issues in Lacanian psychoanalysis that have ranged over questions of language, and ethics and psychoanalysis. He has also published on clinical issues concerning psychosis and neurosis. His current research is on psychosis, creativity and language.

Kerry Greenwood

Crime author Kerry Greenwood has been a folk singer, director, factory hand, producer, translator, costume-maker, cook, but never more prolific than when she’s the author of the Phryne Fisher series.

Kerry has been charming readers with her crime fiction series ever since she began in 1989 with Cocaine Blues. Sixteen books later there’s no sign of Miss Fisher hanging up her pearl-handled pistol.

Despite also working as a solicitor for the Victorian Legal Aid, Kerry has written four other novels; a number of plays – including The Troubadours with Stephen D’Arcy; is an award-winning children’s writer, and has edited and contributed to several anthologies. In 1996 she published a book of essays on female murderers called Things She Loves: Why women Kill.

With regards to her perennial Phryne Fisher series, Kerry says that as long as people want to read them, she can keep writing them.

Born in the Melbourne suburb of Footscray, she has a degree in English and Law from Melbourne University and lives with a registered wizard.