Mark Raphael Baker: His Literary and Intellectual Legacy

Raimond Gaita is Emeritus Professor of Moral Philosophy at King’s College London and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.The University of Antwerp awarded him the degree of Doctor Honoris Causa “for his exceptional contribution to contemporary moral philosophy and for his singular contribution the role of the intellectual in today’s academic world”. His books include Good and Evil: An Absolute Conception, Romulus, My Father, which was made into a feature film of the same name, A Common Humanity: Thinking About Love & Truth & Justice, The Philosopher’s Dog. After Romulus, as editor with Gerry Simpson, Who’s Afraid of International Law and, most recently, edited by Scott Stevens, Justice and Hope: Essays, Lectures and Other Writings.

Michelle Lesh is a Senior Fellow at Melbourne Law School. She worked at the United Nations as an international lawyer, and for many years in Israel as a legal advisor at governmental, inter-governmental and non-governmental levels. She is on the board of Australian Red Cross International Humanitarian Law Advisory Committee, on the International Council of New Israel Fund, and an Officer for the International Bar Association War Crimes Committee. She has written for a number of publications, including The Jewish Independent. She was Mark Baker’s wife and is the mother of their daughter, Melila.

Sarah Krasnostein is a multi-award winning writer and critic. She is the best-selling author of The Trauma Cleaner, The Believer, the Quarterly Essay, ‘Not Waving, Drowning’ and ‘On Peter Carey’. She holds a doctorate in criminal law and is admitted to legal practice in Australia and America. Her awards include the Victorian Prize for Literature, the Australian Book Industry Award for Non-Fiction and the Walkley’s Pascall Prize for Arts Criticism. She is a regular contributor to The Monthly and The Saturday Paper.

Foong Ling Kong is Publisher at Melbourne University Publishing. Over a two-decade career, she has worked in-house at Penguin, Hardie Grant and Allen & Unwin. She was Chair of the Feminist Writers Festival, on the boards of the Stella Prize and Overland, and managing editor of Anne Summers Reports. She spent the last seven years as Editor of Debates at the Parliament of Victoria, where she published the proceedings of the Legislative Assembly, until her recent reunification with MUP.

Krystyna Duszniak is the owner of Lost Histories, a Polish-Jewish research bureau. She has an MA in History from the University of Melbourne, where she was a student of Mark Baker’s and later went on to be his research assistant for The Fiftieth Gate. Lost Histories was born thanks to Mark sending everyone Krystyna’s way when they asked him for similar research for their parents as he’d done for his. Krystyna worked with Mark whenever she was needed. He was not only her mentor, but her lifelong friend, and not a day goes by when she doesn’t miss him.

Arnold Zable is an acclaimed writer, novelist, much-loved storyteller, and recipient of an Australia Council Award for Lifetime Achievement in Literature. His books include Jewels and Ashes, Cafe Scheherazade, The Fig Tree, Scraps of Heaven, Sea of Many Returns, Violin Lessons, The Fighter, The Watermill, and forthcoming, The Glass Horse of Venice, beautifully illustrated by Anita Lester. He has published numerous features, essays, columns, poems and works for theatre, and lectured widely on the art of story in Australia and internationally. He is immediate past president of PEN International Melbourne, and its current patron.

David Slucki is the Loti Smorgon Associate Professor in Contemporary Jewish Life and Culture, and the Director of the Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation at Monash University. He is the author of Sing This at My Funeral: A Memoir of Fathers and Sons (2019), and The International Jewish Labor Bund after 1945: Towards a Global History (2012). He is currently writing a book on the 1990s sitcom, The Nanny, and is researching antisemitism in Australia. He writes and teaches about Jewish history and culture, television, comedy, and politics.