Some of my friends and family have their own creative interests or contribute directly to my own, on this page I provide some background on them and some links where appropriate, so you can find out more about them and their work.
Barbara Anslow
Barbara Anslow is my paternal grandmother and is now in her 90s. She lived in Hong Kong during much of the 1930s up to the 1960s. She has five children, 25 grandchildren and five great grandchildren and currently lives in Essex.
She wrote girls school stories and other tales in her youth and continued writing on scraps of paper while in a Japanese internment camp at Port Stanley, where she spent the remainder of the Second World War after the fall of Hong Kong in 1941. Publishing articles and short stories in Hong Kong after the war, she later turned her experience of colonial Hong Kong life and the internment camp into a novel The Young Colonials, which she published in 1997. She sold out the first print run through self promotion and word of mouth and has since given lectures on the novel and her wartime experiences to community groups on numerous occasions.
She encouraged me to write when I was a child, gave me my first typewriter.
- An interview from the China Daily is here
- The Young Colonials on Amazon is here.
- You can read her short account of the atmosphere after the fall of Hong Kong on Christmas Day 1941 here. She has written a number of other accounts about his Hong Kong experiences on the same forum.
Finbar Anslow
Finbar Anslow is my uncle. He lives in Italy and is married with three children. He is the founder, lead singer and songwriter for Vilamba who have recently released their first commercial album. His daughter Gwen also sings in the group.
Here is the link the Vilamba website.
Patrick Anslow
Patrick Anslow is my father. Besides myself he has two other children and currently lves in Essex in the United Kingdom.
He has recently published a Expecting to Fly, a book charting his spiritual experiences.
Link to Expecting to Fly website
Jack Dann
Jack is probably best known as science fiction writer, but his fiction which includes nine novels and over 100 short works spanning a wide range of genres. His best known novel, The Memory Cathedral, is a work of historical fiction and alternate history. Imagining two years in Leonardo da Vinci's life that are little documented and a reality where he actually built and put into practice the designs he is famous for.
Jack is also very active in the science fiction community and as one of the most respected editors in the business who has taken an active interest in finding and promoting talent in the field across several decades.
I have been working with Jack on The Work of Jack Dann for the past two years and during that time learnt a great deal about the craft of writing and the writing world from discussions with him about his work and the field.
Jack's website
Ian Paradine
Ian Paradine is a Visual artist who studied Painting & Drawing (under Peter Booth and Dale Hickey) at P.I.T. in Melbourne. He then studied Painting, Photography & Moving Image at The Camberwell College of Art in London. He now lives and has a studio practice in Vienna where he produces & exhibits in series: Paintings and Drawings on canvas, wood and paper. He also works with Photography producing limited edition C-prints and handmade Lightboxes.
I met Ian when I was a teenager and he was studying in London and he was a creative mentor to me, encouraging both my writing and work in the visual arts.
Ian's website
Mark Rathbone
Mark is my uncle. Mark attended the London Centre for Theatre Studies and commenced acting early in the past decade. He has appeared in a number of short films and three feature films, most recently Alex Chandon's Inbred, a horror film set in Yorkshire.
Mark on IMDB
Charles Spiteri
Charles is a film lecturer and academic, a fiction and non-fiction writer and also a film maker. He has worked as a journalist, publishing in Belgium, in The Big Issue in Melbourne and also published his academic thesis in Senses of Cinema. He won the 2006 Australian Horror Writers Association competition for short stories with "Vara", which was later published in Dark Animus. His short films have been shown in a number of film festivals.
I have known Charles for over twenty years and we have frequently discussed and assisted one another with our various creative interests. We have often spoken about collaborating on a project together, but have yet to find the right piece to do so.
Charles Spiteri on IMDB
Article on "Isolation and Subjugation: The Telephone in the Slasher Film" in Senses of Cinema
