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…

Ingrid Horrocks is a poet, essayist, travel writer and fiction writer from Te Whanganui a Tara, Wellington. Her most recent book, Where We Swim (Te Herenga Waka UP and UQP, 2021), a blend of memoir, essay and nature writing, was described by the Australian Book Review as a “luminous” “work of wondrous depth.” Her non-fiction essays have appeared in Lithub, The Ninth Letter,…

Eileen Chong is a poet based in Sydney, Australia. She was born in Singapore of Hakka, Hokkien and Peranakan (Straits Chinese) descent.  Her poetry collections are Burning Rice (2012), Peony (2014), Painting Red Orchids (2016), and Rainforest (2018), all from Pitt Street Poetry, Sydney. Her most recent collection is A Thousand Crimson Blooms from the University of Queensland Press (2021). We Speak of Flowers is…

Dr Jared Thomas is the author of critically acclaimed books for children and young adults including Uncle XBox (Magabala 2023), My Spare Heart (Allen & Unwin 2022), Songs that Sound Like Blood, and Calypso Summer, which was selected by the International Youth Library as a White Raven Book and short-listed for the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Indigenous Writing. Jared is…

Eda Gunaydin is a Turkish-Australian essayist and researcher whose writing explores class, intergenerational trauma and diaspora. Her collection Root & Branch: Essays on Inheritance (NewSouth Publishing) won the 2023 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Non-Fiction, and was shortlisted for the Matt Richell Prize for New Writer of the Year at the 2023 ABIAs. Her essays have been published in the Sydney Review of Books, Cordite,…

Amie Kaufman is a New York Times, USA Today and internationally bestselling author of science fiction and fantasy. Her multi-award winning work has been translated into nearly thirty languages, and is in development for film and TV. Raised in Australia and occasionally Ireland, Amie has degrees in history, literature, law and conflict resolution, and is…

Sulari Gentill is the author of the multi- award-winning Rowland Sinclair Mysteries, a series of (currently) ten historical crime novels set in 1930s Australia.  Her widely praised standalone novel, After She Wrote Him, won the Ned Kelly Award for Best Crime Novel and was short-listed for the Davitt Award. Most recently, she published the award-winning and…

Vivian Pham is a Vietnamese novelist, essayist, and poet from southwestern Sydney. In high school she wrote a novel called The Coconut Children, which was published in March 2020 by Penguin Random House.  In 2021 she was named one of The Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Australian Novelists and she won the Matt Richell Award…

Luke Horton is a writer, critic and creative writing lecturer from Naarm. His debut novel, The Fogging, was highly commended for the 2019 Victorian Premier’s Award for an Unpublished Manuscript and published by Scribe in 2020. His latest novel, Time Together, was published by Scribe in March 2025. The former editor of The Lifted Brow…

Alice Robinson is the author of three novels. Anchor Point (2015) was longlisted for the Stella Prize and the Indie Book Awards. The Glad Shout (2019) was shortlisted for an Aurealis Award and The Colin Roderick Literary Award and won the Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction. If You Go will be published in 2024. Alice completed a…

Beau Wylie is the creative moniker of Newcastle based creative Cam Beau Wylie Foster. From an inquisitive childhood spent wading through wild creeks and building scraggly nooks in the bush around his home, Beau began drawing his own wondrous worlds full of brilliant frogs, nipping yabbies and curious marsupials from the moment he could grasp…

Ashley Kalagian Blunt is the number one bestselling author of Dark Mode, which was released in multiple territories and languages and shortlisted for the 2024 Ned Kelly Award for Best Crime Novel, the ABIA General Fiction Book of the Year and the Danger Award for Best Crime Debut. Ashley co-hosts James and Ashley Stay at Home, a…

Cathy Vallance is an editor with over fifteen years’ experience in the publishing industry. She has worked at UQP since 2012. Although she project manages books across the whole list, she has a special interest in children’s and YA. Cathy has collaborated with many brilliant authors, including Peter Carnavas, Nova Weetman, Kate Gordon and Ellen…

Lauren Aimee Curtis is the author of the novels Dolores and Strangers at the Port. In 2023, she was named on Granta’s once-in-a-decade Best of the Young British Novelists list. Her writing has appeared in The White Review, Catapult, Sydney Review of Books, Best Summer Stories, and New Australian Fiction 2021, among other publications. Her…