FRESHWATER BAY PRESS

Diana Giese's work across communities for libraries, museums and educational institutions at national, state and local level, is reflected in several of her books and many of her articles. She has organised history projects and co-ordinated public programs around Australia. She has worked in London and Sydney for publishers large and small, including Macmillan, HarperEducational, Brandl & Schlesinger, Pandanus Books and Oxford University Press. Now she runs her own publishing consultancy, offering project management, editing, oral history and writing expertise, and transforming manuscripts, from reworked theses to memoirs and first novels, into books, collections and Web material.

Of her book Astronauts, Lost Souls and Dragons (University of Queensland Press, 1997), The Canberra Times wrote: 'Its particular value is the way it permits this eclectic and idiosyncratic collection of Chinese Australians, whose voices have long been silenced, to speak for themselves at last.' Beyond Chinatown (National Library of Australia, 1995) contains 'key records of the formation and make-up of Darwin', said China Books. A better place to live (2009), about the people who built community and culture in the Top End of the Northern Territory from the 1950s until self-government, was written with the support of a History Grant from the NT Archives Service, and uses the rich source material available there and in the NT Library.