Marie Alafaci has worked as an editor, an English and Science teacher, a publication consultant and a corporate trainer. Her training specialties include business communication, professional and corporate writing, negotiating, conflict management, team building, public speaking and customer service. She has broad retail and marketing experience gained from ten years in management positions in a major retail corporation.
Marie is also a published author. Her two most recent publications are: Crystal Clear: Water Pollution in Australia (Reed Library) and Savage Cows and Cabbage Leaves: an Italian life (Hale & Iremonger), which was category finalist in the Italy in the World Awards in July 2000, and was awarded an Honourable Mention by the Royal Historical Society in the Victorian Community History Awards in April of the same year. She also writes picture story books and young adult fantasy novels, and has been author in residence at Rosanna primary school.
In 1995 Marie left the corporate world to pursue a career in writing and commenced a Diploma of Arts - Professional Writing & Editing at Holmesglen TAFE. During 1995 and 1996, she wrote and recorded a radio history of Loy's Lemonade which was broadcast on community radio.
Marie has taught non-fiction writing at Holmesglen TAFE and guest lectured for the CAE professional writing course.
Emma Hegarty has worked as a copy-editor and desktop publisher in educational publishing, a writer and designer for a local newspaper, and a student media adviser and rights mediator in the TAFE system in Victoria and Queensland. She has also tutored in publishing studies at Monash University and has a broad range of writing credits from journalistic pieces in local newspapers to chapters in two books (one on Australian Rules football and the other on the history of book publishing in Australia).
Currently, she is the publisher and production manager at Monash Asia Institute Press, a scholarly press specialising in Asian Studies.
Emma's educational qualifications include a Masters degree in publishing, for which she analysed the demographics of bestsellers in Australian trade publishing and book-selling, and a Diploma in Professional Writing and Editing. Her research interests include Australian history, the publishing industry, and the South Pacific.