Board of Management

Lesley Reece is the Founding Director of The Literature Centre. From 1992 until 2022, she was both Artistic Director and General Manager, leading the Centre to be acknowledged nationally and internationally as a Centre of Excellence for Australian Children’s and Young Adult Literature.

She has won the CBCA’s Nan Chauncey Award and has received an AM, Member of the Order of Australia, for her work promoting Australian children’s literature and nurturing those who create it. She has been deeply involved in promoting WA adult literature for Perth Festival 2019 to 2021; was a founding member of Irish Children’s Book Trust 1989 to 1992; and wrote the Guide to Irish Children’s Books, Volumes 1 & 2, 1990 and 1991.

Ros O’Brien was raised with a love of reading – as a child her father would read aloud passages from Omar Khayyam, William Blake and TS Eliot, rejoicing in the beauty and rhythm of the words. Raised in a home with thousands of books there was never time to be bored and never an excuse to be ignorant.

Ros has run a small accounting practice in the Perth Hills for over twenty years and prior to that worked as a commercial accountant. As her five children are now adults, Ros is keen to contribute her time and expertise at a Board level to organisations such as Writing WA and Jigsaw Adoptions.

Dr Per Henningsgaard is a Senior Lecturer at Curtin University, where he is also the Major Coordinator of the Professional Writing and Publishing major. At Curtin, he recently founded Elephant Page Publishing, which is a publishing house that is powered by students and guided by a team of publishing professionals with a mission to uplift new voices and talents on both sides of the publishing process. He has previously held permanent teaching positions in the master’s degree in Book Publishing at Portland State University and the English Department at University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point. Per is a Fulbright Scholar who received his PhD from the Department of English and Cultural Studies at The University of Western Australia, and his research interests include editing, publishing and Australian literature. He has published more than twenty refereed articles and chapters across six countries. In addition to his work as an academic, he has worked as an in-house editor for a multinational publishing house in New York City, and as the director of two small, independent publishing houses in the states of Wisconsin and Oregon. He continues to practice as a freelance editor in Perth (Boorloo), Western Australia.

Alison is an experienced copyright lawyer and an active member of the WA writing community.
She currently works as the National Copyright Manager for the NSW Department of Education, providing copyright advice and support to schools and TAFEs nationally.
She has a longstanding interest in the arts, with previous roles at Condé Nast Publications in New York, Becker Entertainment, Sydney Festival and the Arts Law Centre of Australia. She has also worked as the Chief Executive Officer of Autism West (now Spectrum Space).
Alison holds a Master of Laws, specialising in Media, Communications and Information Technology Law, from UNSW.
She writes short fiction and has had works published in anthologies in Australia and overseas.

Shey Marque is an award-winning writer of poetry and short fiction from WA. Shey is a former Coordinator and Board Member of The Katharine Susannah Prichard Writers’ Centre, the Coordinator of Hospital Poets Australia, and current member of the WA Poets Inc Committee. She was the inaugural winner of the Queensland Poetry Festival Emerging Older Poet Award 2018, and her prose poetry series won the Blue Nib Chapbook Award (Chaffinch Press, Dublin 2020). Keeper of the Ritual (UWA Publishing 2019), her first full poetry collection, was shortlisted for the Noel Rowe Poetry Manuscript Award (Vagabond Press 2017). Other collections include the chapbook, Aporiac (Finishing Line Press, USA 2016). Shey’s poetry has twice won the Karen W Treanor Poetry Prize (2013, 2014), and many other poems have been shortlisted and placed in national and international competitions including the Tom Collins Poetry Prize, the Ros Spencer Poetry Prize, Poetry d’Amour, PCWC Poetry Prize, Melbourne Poets Union International Poetry Prize, and the Australian Catholic University Poetry Prize. Shey also has a special interest in flash and micro fiction which have been shortlisted and placed in the Fish Flash Fiction Award, the Bath Flash Fiction Award, and selected for film production as part of the Microflix Short Film Festival. Beyond writing, Shey’s career as a scientist spanned many years in clinical and research facilities within Australia and New Zealand. She holds a BAppSc(Hons) Medical Science (Curtin University), PhD Molecular Pathology (University of WA), and MA Writing (Swinburne University, Melbourne).

Stephen Bevis is a former Communications Manager at Perth Festival, where he was responsible for promoting the Festival and building relationships with diverse stakeholders including artists, audiences, corporate and public partners, donors and the general public.

Before joining Perth Festival, Stephen was Arts Editor at The West Australian newspaper for 10 years from 2006 to 2016. In that time, he worked to elevate the profile of the arts sector as integral to the comprehensive news and current affairs coverage of a modern, interconnected society and economy. His other roles during a 25-year career as a journalist at The West Australian included Editor of the West Magazine, Deputy Foreign Editor, News Editor, State political reporter and Canberra correspondent.

A graduate of the University of WA with Honours in English Literature, Stephen has also taught English in Japan, tutored in media studies at Curtin University, been a WA Architecture Awards judge, sat on the UWAP Publishing Committee and the Artistic Advisory Committee for WA Ballet.

He also played a key role in the development of not-for-profit independent publication Seesaw Magazine, WA’s premier online arts magazine, where he is currently Deputy Chair.

Professor James Arvanitakis is the Director of the Forrest Research Foundation and recipient of various awards including the Prime Minister’s University Teacher of the Year, Australia India Council Eminent Researcher and received an Excellence in Education Award by the Australian Financial Review. A Fulbright alumnus, he oversaw the application of Western Sydney University to apply the Carnegie Community Engagement Classification Pilot. In 2021, he was appointed the inaugural Patron of Diversity Arts Australia and founded Respectful Disagreements, a brave spaces project, and sits on various boards including the Perth Festival and education board of the Governance Institute of Australia. Based at the University of Western Australia, he is an Adjunct Professor at both the Institute for Culture and Society (at Western Sydney University) and Curtin University.

Dr Marion Kickett is a Balardong Noongar Elder, writer and academic. Born in the Wheatbelt town of York, Marion spent her early years living on the York Reserve. After completing two bachelor’s degrees, Marion completed her PhD at The University of Western Australia on ‘Resilience’ from an Aboriginal perspective, using an Aboriginal methodology. Marion has previously worked in the areas of public health and academia for 30 years.

Rachel is a Nimunburr/Yawuru woman from Broome and the Publisher at Magabala Books. She has worked as Project Editor, Editor, Production Co-ordinator, Marketing Assistant, Sales and Administration Manager. She has worked at her local bookshop and served on the boards of Magabala Books, SPN, APA, WritingWA, Centre for Stories, FNAWN. She has judged various awards and fellowships and contributes to furthering First Nations writing & storytelling in general. She was awarded the WritingWA Literary Lions Medal for outstanding contribution to Western Australia’s literary culture (2020). She is the author of Alfred’s War (2018) and has raised four sons.