About Excursions’ Contributors

Ann Brown is completing a thesis on Charlotte Evans, a nineteenth-century New Zealand novelist. She is interested in ideas of the ‘undiscovered’ in nineteenth-century New Zealand fiction. She has presented papers in Victorian Studies and Australasian Literature Studies. This is a revisiting to an earlier time spent in England.

Justine Grace is undertaking a PhD in the department of Art History at the University of Melbourne. The working title of her thesis is Modern religious art: the tension between the avant-garde and religion. She has previously published an article on the dialectic of Marxism and Christianity in the work of early twentieth-century Italian artists.

John C. Ryan is a second-year PhD candidate in the School of Communications and Arts at Edith Cowan University with a doctoral thesis entitled ‘From Floral Aesthetics to Floraesthesis in the Southwest of Western Australia.’ He is a landscape poet and graduate of the University of Lancaster with a Master of Arts in environmental philosophy.

Megan Orcholski is a MA (communication) student at MSU in Mankato, Minnesota where she teaches public speaking and coaches the competitive speech team. Her interests include performance studies, theater, identity, ethnography, and critical pedagogy. She has presented at several conferences (NCA, CTAM, PTO) and has full intentions of continuing on next fall to obtain her PhD.

Jessica L. Wilkinson's poetry and poetic criticism have appeared in several journals including Philament, Cultural Studies Review, Southerly, Overland and UNUSUAL WORK. She received a Varuna Residency Fellowship in 2009 and will be heading there post-PhD to write up her new poetry project on Percy Grainger.

Daniel Wood is a graduate student at the University of Melbourne where he is currently completing his PhD thesis on the literary legacy of the American frontier. He also tutors undergraduate students in American literature and is co-editor of the graduate student journal antiTHESIS.