Hayley Scrivenor is a former festival director and the internationally bestselling author of Dirt Town. Hayley’s debut novel won a number of national and international awards, including an ABIA for General Fiction Book of the Year in Australia, a Lambda Literary award for LGBTQ+ Mystery in the USA, and a prestigious ‘New Blood’ Dagger from the…

Mandy Beaumont taught creative writing and communications at Griffith University for over a decade and holds a PhD and a master’s in creative writing. She is also a regular writer for The Big Issue and a specialist fundraising writer for non-profits. Her new true crime inspired novel, The Thrill of It, is out now with Hachette Publishing, and her…

Lucy Christopher is an award-winning, best-selling author for young adults, children, and adults, with wide readership; her books are published in over 20 countries, selling over 250,000 copies. She has won many international awards, including the Printz Honor Award, Branford Boase, Prix Farniente, Golden Inky, and an International Reading Association Award. Release, her debut psychological thriller for…

Kavita Bedford is an Australian writer with a background in journalism, anthropology, and literature. Her work explores themes of migration, identity, loss, memory, globalisation, racism, mythology, and intergenerational trauma, often drawing on oral histories and fieldwork to interrogate broader social questions. With a focus on amplifying voices often excluded from mainstream media and literature, her…

Liz Evans is an award-winning British writer, journalist, author and novelist, currently based in lutruwita/Tasmania. She spent the 1990s as a music journalist in London and published two books on women and rock culture for Pandora/HarperCollins before training as a psychotherapist. Since moving to Australia, she has continued to write for a wide range of…

Kirsten Tranter is an internationally acclaimed writer, editor and critic based in the San Francisco Bay Area, author of the novels Hold (2016), longlisted for the Miles Franklin Award and the Voss Literary Award, A Common Loss and The Legacy. She has mentored authors and taught creative writing and literary studies around the world at…

Dan Hogan is the author of Secret Third Thing (Cordite, 2023), which won the Five Islands Prize and Mary Gilmore Award, and was named one of the ‘best 25 Australian books of 2023’ by The Guardian. Dan’s poetry has been recognised by the Peter Porter Poetry Prize, Judith Wright Poetry Prize, XYZ Prize, and Val Vallis…

Nell Pierce is the author of the novel A Place Near Eden (Allen & Unwin, 2022), winner of the Australian/Vogel’s Literary Award. Her short fiction has been published in The American Scholar. She holds a Master of Fine Art in Fiction Writing from the New School in New York City. Nell has worked as an Associate Literary…

Anthony is a BAFTA and AWGIE award winning screenwriter, director and script producer. The projects Anthony has written and directed have won numerous international awards including a Primetime Emmy, an International Digital Emmy, two BAFTAs and five Australian Writers’ Guild awards. One of Anthony’s first short films, STOP (2000), was nominated for the Palmes d’Or for short…

Dr Sian Prior has been a writer and broadcaster for over three decades. She has been a presenter on ABC RN, ABC Classic and ABC Melbourne, and a regular columnist and opinion writer for The Age/Sydney Morning Herald. Her essays have been published in magazines and literary journals, and her short fiction in a range of…

Ilka Tampke is an award-winning author, academic and teacher. Her first two novels explore the druidic culture of Ancient Britain and its disruption by Roman colonisation. Skin (2015) was published in eight countries and nominated for the Voss Literary Prize and the Aurealis Awards. Songwoman (2018) was published in five countries and won the Small…

Emily Maguire is the author of seven novels and three non-fiction books. Her novel An Isolated Incident was shortlisted for the Stella Prize and the Miles Franklin Literary Award, and her 2022 book Love Objects was shortlisted for the ABIA Literary Fiction Book of the Year. She was the 2018/2019 Writer-in-Residence at the Charles Perkins…

KRIS KNEEN is the award-winning author of fiction, poetry and non-fiction. They have been shortlisted for many awards including the prestigious Stella Prize. Their poetry collection Eating My Grandmother won the Thomas Shapcott Prize. Their latest book Fat Girl Dancing was shortlisted for the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award, The Qld Premier’s Literary Award for a…

Marisa Pintado is the Publishing Director at Hardie Grant Children’s Publishing. She has edited and published a wide range of best-selling and award-winning titles for children and teenagers, including Welcome to Your Period and Welcome to Consent by women’s and adolescent health experts Dr Melissa Kang and Yumi Stynes; the Real Pigeons series, which is…

Rebecca Slater is a literary agent at a4 Literary. She has over 12 years’ experience in the publishing industry – both in Australia and the UK – including roles at Left Bank Literary, Allen & Unwin and the Stella Prize.

Dr Lisa Fuller is a Wuilli Wuilli woman from Eidsvold Queensland, also descended from Wakka Wakka and Gooreng Gooreng peoples. She’s lived on Ngunnawal and Ngambri lands (Canberra) since 2006 where she works at the University of Canberra as Lecturer in Indigenous Studies. Lisa has won several awards, the first of which was the 2017…

Will Kostakis writes for young adults. First published at nineteen, he is best known for writing whip-smart comedies that break (then mend) hearts. We Could Be Something is his latest novel. It’s a humorous yet heart-rending look at family, fame and falling in love. It won the 2024 Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Young Adult…

Leanne Hall is an award-winning author of young adult and children’s fiction. Her most recent YA novel, The Gaps, won the young adult category of the Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature and the Ethel Turner Prize for Young People’s Literature at the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards. Leanne is currently a PhD candidate at RMIT.

Lloyd Jones is a writer based in New Zealand and Melbourne.  His work has been translated into many languages. He has written across all genres – novels, short stories, memoir, and poetry, and nonfiction. His novels include The Book of Fame, Mister Pip, which won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and was shortlisted for The Booker…

Dr Sophia Barnes is a writer and professional editor with over a decade of experience working with authors of fiction and memoir, including many who have been commercially published. She has been a member of the Lifestories editing team since 2013, providing manuscript assessment and development support, structural and copyediting services and mentoring. She has…