Our Team | Sydney Review of Books

Editor: James Jiang

James Jiang is an editor, writer, and academic who lives on Bidjigal country and works on the lands of the Dharug people. Prior to joining the Sydney Review of Books, he was Assistant Editor at Griffith Review and Australian Book Review. He received his PhD in modernist literature from the University of Cambridge and taught in the English and Theatre Studies program at the University of Melbourne for a number of years. His essays and reviews have appeared in a variety of scholarly and generalist publications in Australia and abroad.

Digital Communications Officer: Huyen Hac Helen Tran

Huyen Hac Helen Tran is a Vietnamese-Australian writer working on Wangal land. Her work can be found in Sydney Review of Books, SBS Voices, The Suburban Review, The Big Issue, Peril Magazine, The Wayward Sky Anthology (2021) and more.

Administrator: Melinda Jewell

Melinda Jewell holds a PhD in Australian literature and has worked for a decade in the Writing & Society Research Centre at Western Sydney University as the postgraduate advisor. She has also worked as a thesis editor and as a research assistant on a number of W&SRC projects, including one on world literature and another on the benefits of people living in retirement homes participating in creative writing workshops. In her spare time, she loves reading fiction of any kind and gardening.

Contributing Editor: James Ley

James Ley was the founding editor of the Sydney Review of Books. He has been a professional literary critic for two decades and his work has appeared in numerous publications, including The Age, The Australian, the Times Literary Supplement, the Australian Book Review and the Sydney Morning Herald. He is Deputy Editor, Books and Ideas at The Conversation.

Contributing Editor: Catriona Menzies-Pike

Catriona Menzies-Pike is a writer, editor and critic who lives in Vancouver, Canada. She edited the Sydney Review of Books between 2015 and 2023.

Contributing NZ-Aotearoa Editors: Tina Maketerei and Ingrid Horrocks

We publish online to a global audience from our base in Parramatta at the Writing and Society Research Centre at Western Sydney University. The SRB editor, Digital Communications Officer, Administrator, The Circular Editor and Junior Editor are staff members of WSU.

Editorial Interns

Each semester we work with editorial interns from the School of Humanities and Communication Arts at WSU.

Our Advisory Board

A Sydney Review of Books Advisory Board was convened in January 2019 with a brief to provide strategic advice to guide the growth, governance and development of the organisation. Appointments to the Advisory Board are ongoing. The Board does not provide editorial oversight.

Dr Ben Etherington is Senior Lecturer in postcolonial and world literary studies in the School of Humanities and Communication Arts and a member of the Writing and Society Research Centre. He is currently serving as the elected academic representative on the University’s Board of Trustees.

Dr Kate Fagan (Chair) is the Director of the Writing and Society Research Centre. She is a Senior Lecturer in Literary Studies at Western Sydney University and an award-winning poet and songwriter, whose most recent book First Light (Giramondo) was short-listed for the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards and the Age Book of the Year Award. She is a former editor of How2, the eminent U.S.-based journal of contemporary poetry and poetics. Her album Diamond Wheel won the National Film and Sound Archive Award for Folk Recording and she supported Joan Baez on her 2013 tour of Australia/NZ.

Dr Anne Jamison is a feminist literary and cultural critic with a research focus on nineteenth-century Irish and, more recently, Australian women’s literature. She is currently Senior Lecturer in Literary Studies in the School of Humanities and Communication Arts, as well as Deputy Director of the Writing and Society Research Centre.

Dr Debra Keenahan is an artist, psychologist and author. She has 2 PhDs – the first in psychology on Dehumanization, the second in visual arts on Critical Disability Aesthetics. Debra has exhibited in group and solo exhibitions and sole and co-authored a book, book chapters and articles. Her work focusses upon the personal and social impacts of disability. Having achondroplasia dwarfism, Debra brings personal insight to understanding the dynamics of interpersonal interactions that include/exclude the visibly different from equitable social relations. In her art practice she employs different mediums to communicate with and engage people on difficult issues, encouraging empathy for the socially excluded.

Dr Catriona Menzies-Pike is a writer, editor and critic who lives in Vancouver, Canada. She edited the Sydney Review of Books between 2015 and 2023.

Dolla Merrillees is the Director of Western Sydney Creative. She has held various senior roles including CEO and Director, Curatorial, Collections and Exhibitions with the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences; Associate Director, Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation; and Director, Visual Arts, Museums and Galleries NSW.

Sheila Ngọc Phạm is a writer, editor and radio producer working across public health, media and the arts. She writes for a wide range of literary and mainstream publications, and was a finalist for the 2021 Pascall Prize for Arts Criticism. Sheila has held editorial roles at the ABC and co-produced Tongue Tied and Fluent, a five-part series for Radio National exploring multilingualism in Australia, which was awarded an ABU-UNESCO Together for Peace Media Award 2021. Sheila lives on Dharug land with her husband and two children.

Gabrielle Trainor AM is a non-executive director and advisor whose experience covers over 25 years on boards in the public and private sectors ranging from infrastructure and urban development to sports, arts and culture and Indigenous advancement and welfare. Among her many board appointments Gabrielle is Chair of the National Film and Sound Archive and Barnardos Australia and an appointed member of the Western Sydney University Board of Trustees.

Professor Anthony Uhlmann FAHA is the former Director of the Writing and Society Research Centre at the University of Western Sydney. He is the author of many scholarly works and was the editor of the Journal of Beckett Studies from 2008-2013. His novel Saint Antony in his Desert was published by UWAP in 2018.

Dr John Vallance is the NSW State Librarian and Chief Executive. Until recently he was Headmaster of Sydney Grammar School. He is also the Deputy Chair of the Gonski Institute for Education at the University of New South Wales. In recent years he has served on the Board of the State Library of New South Wales Foundation, as a Trustee of the State Library of New South Wales Foundation and member of the Library Council of New South Wales, and as an Advisory Board member of the Australian String Quartet.

Terri-ann White is the Founder and Publisher of Upswell Publishing and the former Director of UWA Publishing. She has been published since the late 1980s, taught writing in the community and universities, and previously been an independent bookseller.  Her books include a collection of short stories, one novel, three anthologies, and she has been published widely in journals and anthologies. She has an abiding interest in expression and takes great pleasure in collaborative work with other thinkers and artists, especially in the forms of the visual arts and performance.