ABOUT  PAUL
	“Australia is not the science fiction capital of the world; in fact we are probably not even on the map. This unfortunate fact would change if we could produce more writers like Paul Collins.” - Australian Book Review.   PAUL COLLINS (1954- ) was born in England, raised in New Zealand and moved to Australia in 1972. His first published work was the Western novel Hot Lead-Cold Sweat (1975). That same year, in order to support himself so that he could write, Collins launched Void magazine, the first professional science fiction magazine Australia had seen since the demise of the joint Australian and British production Vision Of Tomorrow. Collins edited and published five issues of Void between August 1975 and March 1977, and while it only covered costs, the magazine was instrumental in encouraging lapsed writers Wynne Whiteford and Jack Wodhams to take up writing again, as well as encouraging a new generation of Australian science fiction writers and readers. In 1978, Collins moved from magazine to book publishing, initially with the Worlds original anthology series, but later with a series of original Australian science fiction and fantasy novels. In 1981 Collins was joined by Rowena Cory who painted many of the covers for their books, and Cory and Collins went on to publish fourteen Australian science fiction and fantasy novels by authors such as Wynne Whiteford, A. Bertram Chandler, Jack Wodhams, Keith Taylor, Russell Blackford and David Lake. With the posthumous  publication of Chandler’s novel The Wild Ones, however, Collins decided that publishing was interfering with his own writing and he closed the business. Collins pioneered the publishing of adult heroic fantasy in Australia and did much to raise the profile of Australian genre writing. Many of the books and stories he published have been republished overseas. He sold his first professional fantasy story in 1977 to the United States magazine Weirdbook and by 1980 he had sold another eleven stories to magazines and books in Australia and overseas. Paul has a black belt in both taekwondo and jujitsu, experience he puts to good use in his recent, fast-paced cyber-oriented tales, which have culminated in the cyberpunk novel Cyberskin. The latter has been published by clocktowerfiction.com (USA), Hybrid Publishers (Australia) and Heyne Verlag (Germany). His stories have sold to a wide variety of mainstream and genre magazines. The best of his work has been collected in The Government in Exile, published by Melbourne’s Sumeria Press in 1994. A later collection, Stalking Midnight, has been published by cosmos.com in both POD and e-book. Collins returned to editing in 1994 to compile Metaworlds, an anthology of Australia’s best recent science fiction, for Penguin Books. This was followed by Strange Fruit, an anthology of dark fantasy tales with a literary bent.  About this time Collins began to develop an interest in young adult literature, in terms of both his writing and editing. Angus and Robertson published his children’s fantasy novel The Wizard’s Torment, which was likened by Sophie  Masson (Reading Time, May 1996) to the classic fantasies The Worm Ourobouros and The Well at the World’s End. It has since been selected by the New South Wales Department of School Education for their Bookshelf List, and extracts were published in School Magazine. Meanwhile, Collins compiled the young adult anthology Dream Weavers for Penguin, the first original Australian heroic fantasy anthology ever. This was followed by a similar book called Fantastic Worlds and the Shivers series of children’s horror novels from HarperCollins. Hodder published Paul’s next anthology, Tales from the Wasteland in 2000. Collins has also written under the name Marilyn Fate and he and Sean McMullen have both used the pseudonym Roger Wilcox. To date, Paul has published over 70 chapter books, around 30 non-fiction hardcovers for the education market, twelve anthologies, two collections of his own stories, edited The MUP Encyclopaedia of Australian Science Fiction and Fantasy, and written over 140 short stories and over 40 novels. His most recent short stories have appeared in Pearson's Picture This! books One and Two, all three of Penguin's Kids' Night anthologies, and various magazines. His latest books are The Slightly Skewed Life of Toby Chrysler, The Glasshouse (illustrated by Jo Thompson) and Mole Hunt, book #1 in The Maximus Black Files. Paul is currently the publisher at Ford Street Publishing and offers a free speakers agency to librarians and festival organisers at Creative Net. Awards 1980s — 2000s a handful of nominations for Best Editor and Best Short Fiction in the Australian SF Achievement Awards 1999— Winner William Atheling Award for work on The MUP Encyclopaedia of Australian Science Fiction and Fantasy; Shortlisted for the Aurealis Convenors’Award. 2000— The Dog King, Notable Book Children’s Book Council; Shortlisted for the Clayton’s Award. 2001— Winner of the Aurealis Convenors’ Award (With Co-editor Meredith Costain) for Spinouts Bronze published by Pearson Education. Joint winner was Shaun Tan for The Lost Thing. 2002 — Winner of the inaugural Peter McNamara Award for life time achievement in SF. 2004 — Home Run (Illustrated by Connah Brecon), Notable Book, Children’s Book Council Awards. 2007 — Short-listed for the WAYRBAs for Swords of Quentaris. 2009 — Morgassa's Folly (in collaboration with Danny Willis), short-listed for the Chronos Award. 2010 — The Slightly Skewed Life of Toby Chrysler, short-listed for The Speech Pathology Award. 2011 — The Glasshouse (illustrated by Jo Thompson), chosen by international IBBY as an 'Outstanding Book'; short-listed for the CBC's Chrichton Award. 2011 — Awarded the A. Bertram Chandler Award for Lifetime Achievement in Australian Science Fiction.