Chris Hammer is the author of two non-fiction books and three crime fiction novels. His non-fiction works , The River and The Coast were published in 2010 and 2012 and constitute a blend of travel writing and narrative non-fiction. Chris’ debut crime fiction novel, Scrublands, was published by Allen & Unwin in 2018, and is a worldwide best seller. It won…

Sarah Bailey is an author and advertising executive. Sarah’s debut novel, The Dark Lake, was published by Allen & Unwin in 2017, and is a best seller in Australia, the USA and Canada. It won both the 2018 Davitt Award for Best Crime Debut and the 2018 Ned Kelly award for Best First Crime. There are two…

Craig Sisterson is the author of the non-fiction crime book, Southern Cross Crime. Craig is a features writer and crime fiction expert from New Zealand who writes for newspapers and magazines in several countries. In recent years he’s interviewed hundreds of crime writers and talked about the genre on national radio, top podcasts, and onstage at festivals…

Tom Doig is an author, editor, journalist and academic. He has written two books about the 2014 Hazelwood mine fire disaster: Hazelwood (Penguin Random House,  2020; finalist in the Walkley Book Awards) and The Coal Face (Penguin, 2015, winner of the Oral History Victoria Education Innovation Award). He has also written a humorous travel memoir, Mörön…

Penni Russon is a young adult author who writes books that hover on the border of realism and fantasy, interrogating so-called reality and attending closely to the realms of the imaginary. She has recently completed a PhD in the theory and application of comics in youth mental health.

Bec Kavanagh is a PhD candidate at La Trobe University. Her research explores the homogenisation of the adolescent female body in coming of age narratives. Bec is a recognised expert in youth literature and has worked extensively in feminist literary spaces. She was the inaugural chair of #LoveOzYA and currently manages the Schools Program at…

Peggy Frew’s work has appeared in New Australian Stories 2, Kill Your Darlings, Meanjin, and The Big Issue. Her novels have been awarded the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript and the Barbara Jefferis Award, shortlisted for the Stella Prize, the Miles Franklin Literary Award, the UTS Glenda Adams Prize for New Writing, and longlisted for…

Danielle Binks is a Melbourne-based writer, reviewer, book blogger, Youth Literature Advocate and literary agent with Jacinta di Mase Management. In 2017, she edited and contributed to Begin, End, Begin an anthology of new Australian young adult writing inspired by the #LoveOzYA movement, which won the ABIA Book of the Year for Older Children (Ages 13+) and was shortlisted in…

After more than 20 years’ experience in the book industry, Jacinta di Mase started her own agency in 2004. Jacinta has a background in book selling and publishing, and worked for ten years in two of Australia’s premier literary agencies: Australian Literary Management (ALM), and Jenny Darling & Associates. She graduated with distinction from the RMIT Graduate…

Omar Sakr is an Arab-Australian poet, born of Lebanese and Turkish Muslim migrants. His debut collection, These Wild Houses (Cordite Books, 2017) was shortlisted for the Kenneth Slessor Prize, and the Judith Wright Calanthe Award. His new collection, The Lost Arabs (University of Queensland Press, 2019), was shortlisted for the Queensland Literary Awards, the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards…

Sally Rippin has been writing and illustrating children’s books for over fifteen years. She has over forty books published, many of them award-winning, including two novels for young adults. She has taught writing for children courses at the Council of Adult Education, the Victorian Writers’ Centre and as a part of the Professional Writing and Editing…

Martine Murray writes for children and young adults. Her first novel The Slightly True Story of Cedar B Hartley was included in the White Ravens international list of outstanding children’s books, and was shortlisted for the Victorian, NSW and Queensland Premier’s Awards, and the CBCA Awards. She won the Queensland Premier’s Award for How to Make a Bird and again…

Simmone Howell is the author of Notes from the Teenage Underground, Everything Beautiful, Girl Defective and the CBCA- award winning collaborative novel Take Three Girls (w/Cath Crowley and Fiona Wood). She is a PhD candidate at LaTrobe University where she is researching life-writing about the teenage experience. Her non-fiction is published in The Age Spectrum,…

Katherine Kovacic is a Melbourne-based writer, art historian and former veterinarian. Her debut novel, The Portrait of Molly Dean, was shortlisted for the 2019 Ned Kelly Award for Best First Fiction, and is the first of three books in the Alex Clayton art mystery series. Her first true crime book, The Schoolgirl Strangler, will be…

R.W.R. McDonald (Rob) is an award winning author. His debut novel, The Nancys won Best First Novel in the 2020 Ngaio Marsh Awards, as well as being a finalist in the Best Novel category.  It was shortlisted for Best First Novel in the 2020 Ned Kelly Awards, and Highly Commended for an Unpublished Manuscript in…

Jane Novak is a literary professional with over twenty years’ experience in bookselling and publishing. She is passionate about Australia’s local industry and the creation and promotion of Australian books and writers. Her agency represents writers across many genres and her clients include Helen Garner, Kate Grenville, Liz Byrski, David Malouf and Tim Flannery.

Patti Miller is an award-winning memoirist and nonfiction writer, whose 2012 book, The Mind of a Thief, was longlisted for the Stella Prize and the Nita Kibble Prize, shortlisted for the WA Premier’s Prize for Non-Fiction, winner of the NSW Premier’s Prize for History and on the syllabus for English for the VCE in Victoria. She is…

Gretchen Shirm is the author of a collection of short stories Having Cried Wolf, for which she named a 2011 Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Australian Novelist. Her first novel Where the Light Falls, published by Allen & Unwin, was shortlisted for the 2017 Christina Stead Prize for Fiction in the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards….

James Bradley  is an award-winning writer and literary critic. His books include the novels Wrack, The Deep Field, The Resurrectionist and Clade, a book of poetry, Paper Nautilus, The Penguin Book of the Ocean, The Change Trilogy for young adults and his latest novel, Ghost Species which was published in 2020. His articles and reviews have appeared in The Times Literary Supplement, The Guardian,…

Carrie Tiffany was born in West Yorkshire and grew up in Western Australia. She spent her early twenties working as a park ranger in Central Australia and now lives and works in Melbourne. Her first novel, Everyman’s Rules for Scientific Living, was shortlisted for the Orange Prize, the Miles Franklin Literary Award, the Guardian First Book…