Julie Beveridge Festival Director

Julie is an emerging Queensland poet. At 26, she is the youngest director of QPF to date.

She has two collections of poetry rock’n’roll tuxedo and Home is Where the Heartache is (Small Change Press) and is regularly published widely in print and online publications.

As an active member of the Brisbane poetry community, she reads regularly at SpeedPoets, ouTsideRs and The Velvet Landmine. She is passionate about the innovation in promotion and distribution of new poetry and is always looking for a new way to deliver poetry to an audience.

Julie has been a feature artist at the Queensland Poetry Festival: spoken in one strange word; Byron Bay Writers Festival; Tasmanian Poetry Festival and the Sydney Writers Festival: 2006 Word Wrestling Federation SLAM as well as reading at various arts events in Brisbane, Noosa, Bulimba, Rockhampton, Ipswich, Nambour, The Gold Coast and Melbourne.

Julie is excited to be directing this year’s festival and is looking forward to what is always a great experience.

Rowan Donovan was born in 1952 in Hawera, New Zealand. He started performing his poetry around Brisbane at various venues in 2001, often working collaboratively with good friend and Brisbane poet Graham Nunn. He continues to showcase his work to audiences whenever the opportunity presents itself. He is proud to be a founding member of Speedpoets and this is his third year as a committee member for the Queensland Poetry Festival.

Zenobia Frost is a poetic adventurer and protector of apostrophes studying Creative Writing at QUT. Her creative work – fiction and non-fiction – has been published in Voiceworks, The Definite Article, SpeedPoets zines, LOTL, and in Going Down Swinging with Timothy Tate in their musical duo Colouring by Numbers. Zen likes the way sea-jellies magnify grains of sand.

Holly Buschman migrated to Australia In 2005, where she encountered a curious alternative to the English language involving copious abbreviations and prolific nicknames with ‘-zza’ suffixes. In this unique linguistic setting, where words are meant to be bent, she discovered her interest in writing poetry. Holly’s poetic career kicked off with a win in the 2007 Poetry UnEARTHED competition. Her work has appeared in SpeedPoets magazine and on Brisbane’s City Cats as part of the 2007 Poem of the Week project. She was a finalist in the In the Moment competition run by redbubble.com, with her work published in the In the Moment anthology. She reads regularly at SpeedPoets.

Graham Nunn is a Brisbane based writer, co-founder of Small Change Press and a founding member of Brisbane's longest running poetry event, SpeedPoets. His work has been described as assured, achieved & ambitious. He has published 4 collections of poetry, the latest, Ruined Man is now available from Small Change Press.

Alicia Bennett is a Brisbane poet who has published two collections of poetry.  The Tincture of Salt was published in 2004 by Spotted Gecko Press. Faith, a verse novel edited by award winning Queensland poet Ross Clark, was launched at the Queensland Poetry Festival in 2007. Faith is currently being adapted for the stage by Brisbane playwright and theatre director Michelle Miall.  Alicia has also researched and written the true crime casebook, Death Before Dishonour: The Crime that Broke Brisbane's Heart, published by Jack Sim Publications and launched at the 2007 Brisbane Writer's Festival.
 
Alicia has performed extensively including as a feature poet at Brisbane's renowned Speedpoets, at ouTsideRs on the Sunshine Coast, The Velvet Landmine, Riverbend Books, Melbourne's Midsummer Festival, Queensland's Poets for Pride and the Queensland Poetry Festival in 2004, 2005 and 2007. Alicia has also performed at the Brisbane Writer's Festival in 2005 and 2007 in addition to the Straight out of Brisbane Festival in 2004 and 2007. She is currently completing her Masters of Writing, Editing and Publishing at UQ.
 
Alicia believes that the courage of the poet is to keep ajar the door that leads into madness (Morley).

Nerissa Rowan is obsessed with words - reading them, writing them, speaking them, and moulding them into winning combinations on the virtual Scrabble board. This obsession has drawn her in to the colourful world of the Brisbane poetry scene. Nerissa has been writing poetry and lyrics most of her life, and loves to make words sing.

Francis Boyle is a poet, sculptor, graphic designer, and film-maker. He is a longtime participant in the Brisbane poetry scene and produces the poetry magazine small packages with Rob Morris.