Overland Overloaded blogging team


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ben-pobjie-pic Ben Pobjie is a poet, comedian, writer, blogger and generally nice chap. A fixture on Melbourne’s spoken word scene since the early 16th century and frequent guest on 3RRR and ABC 774, he has a weekly column at Australian news commentary site New Matilda, has appeared in the Age, Crikey, and has published two books: Handy Latin Phrases, and The Adventures of Guanacoman. He has two blogs where fans can follow his creative process and personal insecurity. Described as ‘puerile and bigoted’ by Miranda Devine, he is currently engaged in a campaign to be appointed Australia’s first Poet Laureate.
alec-patric-pic Alec Patric started out writing poetry, and moved onto novel writing, only recently turning his hand to short stories. By an inverse ratio only the god of Chaos understands, he has published six stories this year in magazines like Quadrant, Etchings, Going Down Swinging, and soon in Wet Ink and Page Seventeen. No novels and only the one poem in the upcoming Blue Dog Anthology of Australian fiction. Poetry is still his great love, and while he’s married to the Book, he confesses to never being able to resist the seductions of the brief love affairs of stories.
iq-pic Benjamin Theolonius Sanders (IQ) – poet, educator, publisher, international slam champion. Loved by audiences from Beale Street to Sydney Road, IQ is Poet Laureate of the Center for Southern Folklore and 2008 Melbourne Slam Champion. New to Brunswick VIC, the ‘Poet Laureate of Memphis’ is author of five chapbooks and four CDs including the album Somewhere in Memphis. (poetiq.com)
karen-andrews-pic Karen Andrews is an award winning short story writer and poet and the publisher of Miscellaneous Press. Her childrens’ picture book Surprise! was released in October 2008. Karen has triumphed in the Alan Marshall Short Story Competition (2008) competition and the poetry division of the Ellen Gudrun Kastan Literary Awards (2009). In blogging circles she is better known as ‘Miscellaneous Mum’. Her blog (www.miscmum.com) is listed in Australia’s Top 100 and was reviewed by Notebook magazine to contain ‘well-written and heartfelt musings on life and love’.
simmone-michelle-wells-pic Simonne Michelle-Wells is a fiction writer, blogger, and theatre reviewer. She has a background in writing for stage and was a panellist in the Town Hall program at the 2009 EWF. Simonne received a residency at Varuna in 2008 and is currently the blog administrator for the Varuna Alumni Writers’ Blog. She was recently awarded the 2009 Ada Cambridge Prize for biographical short fiction. Simonne moved to Melbourne from Perth late last year and has been blown away by the warmth, encouragement, and inclusiveness of the Melbourne writing community.