| The Northern Star |
After a spectacularly fidgety stint as a life drawing model, Emma Tom got a cadetship on The Northern Star newspaper in Lismore despite wearing unforgivably large earrings and forgetting the name of Australia’s foreign minister during the interview. Her first big break in journalism occurred when a triple murderer wrote from jail saying he liked her work. He thought the piece she’d written on his recapture after a jail break was particularly commendable.
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"Good luck with your career,” were the last words this triple murderer said to Emma Tom during their final interview in a maximum-security prison cell. “And don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
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She thought this left the field fairly open.
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Apart from this, Emma Tom’s main job at the paper was inserting the dollar signs in fruit and vegetable reports. This was a serious business. One time she left out the kiwi fruit and there was a riot.
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| The Sydney Morning Herald |
After a while, Emma Tom moved to the city and spent eight years at The Sydney Morning Herald where - among other things - she conducted a nude interview with American porn star Annie Sprinkle, became a cheerleader for a month and entered the Moscow Circus’s infamous Globe of Death on a dare. The last journalist who’d tried this stunt lost complete control. And we’re talking plumbing, here.
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| The Australian |
Emma Tom now works for The Australian. Some of her more dangerous assignments with News Ltd have included attending superbike school (some actual sparks came off her motorbike’s foot peg), entering a women’s-only demolition derby (she was knocked unconscious) and taking jelly wrestling lessons (she sucked). She has also toured Australia with the Queen and covered judo and wrestling during the 2000 Olympics.
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You can find her column on Wednesdays on The Australian’s feature page.
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| Freelance |
Emma Tom has written for The Guardian (UK), SZ-Magazin (Germany), Cosmopolitan, Cleo, Penthouse, The Sun Herald, The Daily Telegraph, Australian Author, Australian Traveller, Woman’s Day, Marie Claire, Australian Women’s Forum, Lesbians on the Loose and Ms Rider (a magazine for female motorcyclists). She also appeared briefly as a sex advice columnist in a men’s magazine called Max.
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| Fiction |
In addition to the four books mentioned in the BOOKS section of her web site, Emma Tom’s fiction has appeared in a number of anthologies including Dick For A Day, Smashed, Screwed, My One True Love, Dumped and the third War Child anthology called Big Night Out.
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| TV and Radio |
Emma Tom has done quite a bit of TV and radio. In 1999, for instance, she appeared as a reporter and presenter with John Safran and Richard Stubbs on Channel Seven’s The Late Report where she discovered, to her horror, that live television presenting required wearing leg makeup. Other TV shows she’s appeared on include TV1’s Top Ten Summer Countdown, 20 to 1, Sunrise, Mornings with Kerri-Anne, Today Tonight, The Sunday Show, Good News Week, Good Morning Australia, The Morning Shift, The 10.30 Slot, The Graveyard Shift, The Joint, The Big Schmooze, Campaign, The Midday Show, Day Break, The Book Show, Chaos and Australia Between The Sheets with Gretel Killeen.
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| Odd Jobs |
On top of all this stuff, Emma Tom has worked as a babysitter, waitress, barmaid, dating agency pamphlet hander-outerer, hearse driver and ghost and history tour guide (she has an actual bus licence). She has also made cameos appearances in the films Garage Days and Idiot Box, as well as on Australia’s Most Wanted .
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| Awards |
| • 2003: Acknowledgement in The People with Disabilities (WA) Inc Media Awards for a “thought provoking and challenging article” on sex and the disabled (click HERE to read). |
| • 2001: The Women’s Electoral Lobby Edna Ryan Humour Award (awarded for “using wit to promote women’s interests”). |
| • 1998: The 1998 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Asia and the South Pacific for Best First Novel (for Deadset). |
| • 1998: Named as one of Australia’s Best Young Writers at the Sydney Writers’ Festival. |
| • 1997: The Henry Lawson Award for Journalism (for a story on DIY funerals - click HERE to read). |
| • 1997: Two inclusions in the 1997 Carlton and United book of Best Australian Sports Writing and Photography. |
| • 1997: Named as one of Australia’s Best Young Writers at the Sydney Writers’ Festival. |
| • 1992: Cadet of the year, APN editorial competition. |
| • 1990: Sir Harry Budd Memorial Award for NSW Country Journalism. |
• 1989: PF Adams’ Memorial Cadet Award, Prodi Awards.
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| Personal |
Emma Tom lives in Sydney and works from a home office containing a large number of thesauruses and at least two dogs. Her favourite human body part is the fringe followed closely by the tricep. In her spare time, she eats from dodgy Sydney curry houses and re-watches old Buffy the Vampire Slayer DVDs. Somehow she is also finding time to complete a PhD at the University of New South Wales and raise a daughter.
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Emma Tom is a big fan of homosexual penguins, the surreal subject lines of spam e-mails and cattle dogs that look like they’re wearing eyeliner. She also digs Manglish on foreign menus. Her favourite is from a restaurant in Moscow called Arizona where all the staff dress as cowgirls and cowboys. The menu here reads:
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| “America to be absolutely close all only distance of a fork! We hope that you appreciate our kitchen and it will subdue you by the iriginality, abundance meat delicos and specials chef.” |
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The organisers of a writing function in East Asia once asked Emma Tom to e-mail over her biography. When she obliged, they e-mailed back saying “ha ha very funny now please send us your REAL biography”. With hindsight, she thinks this was a reasonable response.
