Antoni Jach

Antoni's first unpublished novel Dina Club was shortlisted for The Australian/Vogel Literary Award in 1990. He completed a BA in English & Art History at La Trobe University. He began teaching at RMIT in 1986 where he taught until 2011. He is married to the novelist, Sallie Muirden with whom he has two children.

Antoni was a much-loved teacher at RMIT's professional writing and editing diploma course, one of the most highly regarded creative writing courses on offer in Australia. He taught in the course from 1988 to 2010 and believes the students are people who have existing or potential writing talent. Stephen Grimwade, current Melbourne Writers Festival Director and ex-student of Antoni's sums up many students' feelings when he explains that Antoni changed his life. Stephen has also been quoted as saying that Antoni was "open to students' ideas rather than just telling us what to think".

Antoni Jach (born 8 May 1956) is an Australian novelist, painter and playwright. His most recent novel is Napoleon's Double, a narrative enlisting history and philosophy for its own neo-baroque ends. His previous novels are The Weekly Card Game, a tragicomic study of quotidian repetition and The Layers of the City, a meditation on contemporary Paris, civilisation and barbarism (which was shortlisted for The Age Book of the Year Fiction Award and was translated into Turkish under the title Sehrin Katmanlari).

Jach was born in Melbourne to a Polish father Wladyslaw Jach (the author of a book of poetry Most Human Beings are Dreamers and of a memoir Walk in a Wind) and Australian mother, Margaret Taylor. Margaret was descended on her mother's side from the Clancys of Castletownroche in Ireland and her forebears on her mother's side arrived in Melbourne on 4 November 1841. It is claimed that Margaret's grandfather, Thomas Gerald Clancy, was the basis for Banjo Paterson's poems 'Clancy of the Overflow' and 'The Man from Snowy River'. Wladyslaw's father was the mayor of the village of Skronina and Wladyslaw, according to his memoir, spent most of World War II in a Nazi concentration camp.