Biography:

Dr Judith Buckrich was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1950 and emigrated to Australia with her parents in 1958. She has returned to Hungary several times and was working for the English language Daily News during the 1989 velvet revolution.

She is an Chair of the International PEN Women Writers' Committee and an Honorary Fellow at Melbourne University's Heritage Unit.

She is the author of Melbourne's Grand Boulevard: The Story of St Kilda Road, The Montefiore Homes:150 Years of Care and George Turner: A Life. She has also completed The Long and Perilous Journey: A History of the Port of Melbourne, a history of Collins Street Melbourne, and a history of Melbourne's Docklands. In her other writing life she has written her own one woman shows, short stories, feature articles and is at present working on a memoir. Judith has been the President of the Melbourne Centre of International PEN for nine years.

Activities:

2003 Contributing writer Melbourne Magazine
2002 Consulting Fellow, World Innovation Foundation
2001-2003 Honorary Fellow, Deakin University, Melbourne.
1993-2003 President, Melbourne Centre, International PEN.
2001 Historian for National Trust Aust. (Vic) Melbourne Maritime Museum Redevelopment project.
1999-2002 Member of the Professional Historians Association and the Australian Society of Authors.
2001-2002 Historian at Melbourne Dockland’s Authority – includes work for a book on a history of the area, content for heritage work on the site, content for the Docklands website, work with Public Art sector etc.
2002-2003 Committee member, Prahran Mechanics’ Institute
2001 Research begun (very slowly) on a cultural history of Melbourne to be published by MUP.
1999-2002 Sessional Tutor and occasional Lecturer at Deakin University, Professional Writing.
1999-2000 Research and writing for The Long and Perilous Journey : A History of the Port of Melbourne - commissioned by the Melbourne Port Corporation, published by Melbourne Books in 2002.
1996-2002 Member of the Australia Council Register of Peers.
2000 Appeared as a commentator on a documentary on Channel 7 about Melbourne’s Docklands on 11 March 2000.
2000 January. Speaker on ‘A Writer’s Life’ for the Age CAE Summer Writing Festival.
1999-2000 Commissioned to write five entries for the Melbourne Encyclopedia on Collins Street, St Kilda Road, the Cleve Gardens, Melbourne Hebrew Congregation Synagogue at Bourke Street, Melbourne Hebrew Congregation Synagogue in Toorak respectively.
1998-2002 Research and writing for a book on the history of Collins Street, Melbourne to be published by Australian Scholarly 2003. Commissioned by the Collins Street Precinct Group.
1998-2003 Research and writing of a history of the Buxton family who have been involved in building and real estate in Melbourne for five generations.
1998 August-September - Attended PEN Congress in Helsinki as the Melbourne delegate and visited St Petersburg, New York, Chicago, Maine, Brussels and Budapest.
1992-1998 Writing and research for a biography of George Turner. Title George Turner : A Life (This was my Doctoral research. at Melbourne University.) Published by Melbourne University Press in 1999. Nominated for Hugo Award Best Related Book 2000.
Publication of an excerpt of George Turner : A Life in the New York Review of Science Fiction, November 1998.
1998 Was awarded the degree of Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Melbourne on 21 March 1998.
1997-1998 Writing and research for a history of GUD Holdings with Kevin Brewer. Never published.
1997-1998 Gave talks on various aspects of writing and research for the St Kilda Writers’ Festival, the Geelong Writing Festival, the Australian Jewish Historical Society, the Nova Mob, Melbourne University History Department, Heritage Week, Box Hill TAFE., Victorian University of Technology Creative Writing Faculty.
1987-1999 Translating (with Istvan Turczi), a collection of modern Australian poetry into Hungarian. (Received Australia Council Translator’s Grant to complete this project.) Published by Szephalom Konyvmuhely, Budapest 1999 as Dalok Ura
1996-1997 Research and writing for a history of the Melbourne Jewish Philanthropic Society and the Montefiore Homes. Published by Melbourne University Press in December 1998. The Montefiore Homes: 150 Years of Care.
1996 Keynote speaker at International PEN Asia Pacific Conference, Tokyo, Japan. November 26 - 28, 1996.
1996 Publication of Melbourne's Grand Boulevard : The Story of St Kilda Road, June 1996, State Library of Victoria.
1987-1998 Stringer for The Europeans, Radio National (ABC).
1994-1995 Co-editor with Lucy Sussex of She's Fantastical - The first anthology of Australian women's speculative fiction in Australia, published in August 1995 by Sybylla Press. Nominated for World Fantasy Award.
1995 Wrote 'A brief history of the Collingwood Football Club', for a CD Rom publication by Brian Spaull. (Published May 1996.)
1995 Publication of translation of a poem, For My Little Girl by Laszlo Fenyo in Overland, Spring 1995 issue.
1994 Guest Editor Overland September 1994 Issue Recent Writing for the Theatre in Australia
1994 Presenter Radio Station 3CR Writers At Work
1994 Publication of On Andy Warhol, Some Personal Anguish and the Last Twenty-five Years in General. in Arena Magazine (June)
1994 Publication of An Interview with George Turner in Eidelon December.
1994 Researcher 1995 City of Port Phillip Aboriginal Writer in Residence Project
1993 Guest Editor Overland Summer 1993 Issue Recent Developments in Australian Science Fiction.
1992 Publication of Corruption, Caricature and Capitalism in the March issue of 24 Hours.
1990-1991 Judge for Feminist Book Fortnight and St Kilda Centenary Writers’ Prize. (Melbourne)
1987-1990 Translated several plays from Hungarian into English some of which were broadcast on the BBC
1988-1989 Worked as translator, journalist and editor for the Hungarian English language daily The Daily News.
1989 Set up first Australian Studies Unit at ELTE University, Budapest, Hungary
1987-1989 During this two and a half year period I had over 20 articles published on various aspects of Hungarian and European cultural life. Most of these would be categorised as feature journalism, and were in-depth, descriptive, analytical and personal. They were published in Quadrant, The Age Monthly Review and Directions.
1988 Received Australia Council grant to promote Australian literature in Hungary.
Resident at the Australia Council's Venice Writers' Studio, December 1987.
July 1987 travel to Hungary.
1987 Publication of 'Great Theatre in Hungary' in the March issue of Directions - the Multicultural Arts Victoria magazine: the first of a series on the arts in Hungary.
Publication of The Counterfeit Silence in the St Kilda Community Writing Book.
Member of the Editorial Collective for the St Kilda Community Writing Book.
Writer-in-School at MacRobertson Girls' High, Term II, 1987.
1986 Wrote and produced a play, Feared by Her Enemies (written 1985) for the Melbourne Fringe Festival. Performed by Bev Geldard at the Organ Factory.
1985 Wrote "Australian Theatre 1970 - 1985" - an article for the International Theatre Institute.
Piri a short story published in the Women 150 Anthology Difference edited by Susan Hawthorne, Waterloo Press.
1984 Reflections in Water and Glass a two-person show with music. Written, performed and produced by Annie Robinson and myself at La Mama, and in Cranbourne and Albury.
1983 Moving to Koo-Wee-Rup a short story published in South Gippsland Town and Country.
1981-1982 Uncultured Pearls a one-woman show written and performed by me at La Mama, Melbourne and the Adelaide Festival Fringe.
1979 Attended a Science Fiction Writers' Workshop at Cremorne, Sydney. This was lead by George Turner.
Jesse a short story published in Stories of Her Life, an anthology edited by Sandra Zurbo and published by Outback Press.
1976-1979 Space to Move & One Off Shot two shows written, designed, produced and performed by Michael McGennan & Bev Geldard respectively and myself at La Mama & the Pram Factory.

Organisational, Administrative and Teaching Activities

1996-1999 Correspondence teacher and assessor in non-fiction for the Victorian Writers Centre.
1996 Gave seminar at Victoria University on doing research from letters and diaries.
1995-1997 Teaching 'Writing Creative Non-fiction' for Melbourne University Union Short Courses and the Victorian Writers Centre.
1994 Guest Lecturer, Workshops on Creative Non-fiction at Swinburne University
1994 &1996 Gave Writing Science Fiction Workshops for Next Wave Festival
1993-1994 Publicist and Programme Co-ordinator 1994 St Kilda Writers Festival
1992-1993 Administrator, Modern Image Makers Association Inc.
1992 Acting Community Arts Officer, City of Malvern.
Co-ordinator Fire Station Print Workshop
1991-1992 Committee member and Acting President Australian Literary Translators Association
1990-1994 Committee member for St Kilda Writers' Festival.
1990-1992 On programming committee for the Melbourne International Writers' Festival.
1990 Acting Project Officer and Editor for Multicultural Arts Victoria. Duties included editing the newspaper Directions and a weekly programme on 3ZZZ Ethnic Radio. Co-ordinated Literary Translation Workshops for Piccolo Festival in conjunction with Meanjin at Melbourne University.
1989 Taught Australian Literature at ELTE University in Budapest, for which I created the syllabus.
Taught creative writing to English teachers at secondary and tertiary institutions in Budapest.
1986-1987 Acting Community Arts Officer in St Kilda, and Co-ordinator of the St Kilda writer-in-community project.
1985 Victoria 150. Women 150 Writers' collective. Organised Writers' Week which 800 women participated in.