Shivaun Plozza’s critically acclaimed debut novel, Frankie, was nominated to ALA’s Best Fiction for Young Adults List, highly commended at the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards, shortlisted for the CBCA Book of the Year Awards, and won the Davitt Award for best YA crime novel. Her second novel, Tin Heart, was nominated to ALA’s Best Fiction…

J.S. Breukelaar is an Australian-American author living in Sydney. She is the author of three novels, most recently The Bridge, and two collections of short stories, in addition to essays, poems and fiction appearing in numerous publications and several Years Bests. Her work has won or been a finalist for multiple national and international awards,…

Shirley Jackson award-winner Kaaron Warren published her first short story in 1993 and has had fiction in print every year since. She was recently given the Peter McNamara Lifetime Achievement Award and was Guest of Honour at World Fantasy 2018, Stokercon 2019 and Geysercon 2019.  She has also been Guest of Honour at Conflux in…

Brooke Robinson is an award-winning playwright turned novelist from Sydney. Her debut novel The Interpreter is published in June 2023 as a lead crime title with Harvill Secker/Vintage (Penguin Random House) in the UK and Commonwealth countries, where it was acquired in a six figure pre-empt as part of a two-book deal. Rights have also been sold in the US…

Originally from Ballarat, Tobias Madden worked for ten years as a dancer, touring Australia and New Zealand with musicals such as Mary Poppins, CATS, Singin’ in the Rain and Guys and Dolls. He now lives in Sydney with his husband, Daniel, and their cavoodle, Ollie. In 2019, Tobias edited and published Underdog: #LoveOzYA Short Stories….

Ben Hobson is a teacher of English and Music, and an author, based in Brisbane. In 2014 his novella, If the Saddle Breaks My Spine, was shortlisted for the Viva La Novella prize. To Become a Whale, his debut novel, was released in 2017. It was longlisted for the ABIA Debut Fiction award, and shortlisted for…

Dr Lee Kofman is a Russian-born, Israeli-Australian author of three fiction books and two memoirs, including Imperfect (Affirm Press, 2019), which was shortlisted for the Nib Literary Award, and The Dangerous Bride (Melbourne University Press, 2014), co-editor of Rebellious Daughters (Ventura Press, 2016) and editor of Split (Ventura Press, 2019), which was longlisted for the…

Lauren Chater is the author of four historical novels – The Lace Weaver (2018), Gulliver’s Wife (2020), The Winter Dress (2022) and The Beauties (2024), all published by Simon & Schuster. In 2018 she was awarded a grant by the Neilma Sidney Literary Travel Fund to visit The Netherlands to research her third book. Both The Winter Dress and The Beauties were longlisted…

Anna McFarlane has worked for several publishing houses during her thirty-year career, and is currently at Allen & Unwin where she publishes books for children and young adults. Recently published books include the CBCA award-winning picture book My Friend Fred by Frances Watts and Anne Yi, award-winning middle grade novel Dragon Skin by Karen Foxlee,…

Fiona Wright is a writer, editor and critic. Her book of essays Small Acts of Disappearance won the 2016 Kibble Award and was shortlisted for the 2016 Stella Prize. Her poetry collections are Knuckled and Domestic Interior, and her most recent essay collection is The World Was Whole.

Laura Elvery is a writer from Brisbane. She is the author of two short story collections, Trick of the Light (2018) and Ordinary Matter (2020), both with UQP. Ordinary Matter was inspired by the lives of female Nobel Prize-winning scientists, and won the USQ Steele Rudd Award for a Short Story Collection at the 2021…

Ceridwen Dovey is a writer based in Sydney. She’s the author of several acclaimed works of fiction (Blood Kin, Only the Animals, In the Garden of the Fugitives, Life After Truth, Mothertongues, and the Audible bestseller Once More With Feeling) and non-fiction (On J.M. Coetzee: Writers on Writers and Inner Worlds Outer Spaces). Her non-fiction essays have been published by newyorker.com, the Smithsonian Magazine,…

Deborah Robertson is a West-Australian born writer and teacher, now based in Melbourne. Her first book, Proudflesh, won The Steele Rudd Australian Short Story Award, and her first novel, Careless, received the Nita B. Kibble Award for Women Writers and the Colin Roderick Award. It was also shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award, The Age…

Malla Nunn is the author of four internationally published Emmanuel Cooper crime novels. A Beautiful Place to Die, Let the Dead Lie, Blessed Are the Dead and Present Darkness have, between them, received two Edgar Award nominations, a Davitt Award and two Antony Award nominations. The series is currently being developed for television by Goalpost pictures. Malla’s debut…

Miles Allinson is a writer from Melbourne. His first novel, Fever of Animals won the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript in 2014 among other prizes. His second novel In Moonland was published in 2021 and won the Age Book of the Year Prize for Fiction in 2022. He has a Bachelor of Creative Arts and a Post…

Italian Australian author Elise Valmorbida won the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award 2019 for her acclaimed fourth novel, The Madonna of the Mountains (Faber), published internationally in several languages. Other published work includes essays, articles, short stories, poetry, and three non-fiction books. Her latest is The Happy Writing Book, a guide to creative writing and wellbeing,…

Oscar Schwartz is a writer from Melbourne, Australia. His award-winning longform journalism has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Harper’s Magazine, and The Monthly. His debut poetry collection, The Honeymoon Stage, was shortlisted for the 2018 Queensland Literary Prize for Poetry.

Gregory Day is a novelist, poet and musician from the Eastern Otways region of Victoria, Australia. He is also an essayist and literary critic. Gregory has published five novels and his work has won many prizes, including the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal, the Elizabeth Jolley Prize, the Manly Artist Book Award and the Alfred…

Emily O’Grady is a writer from Brisbane. Her debut novel, The Yellow House won the 2018 Australian/Vogel’s Literary Award and was shortlisted for the 2019 Ned Kelly Award for Best First Fiction. Her work has been published in Meanjin, Kill Your Darlings, The Big Issue fiction edition, and New Australian Fiction 2021. She holds a PhD in Creative Writing from Queensland University of Technology, where…

A former columnist of the year, Richard Cooke is the author of Tired of Winning and On Robyn Davidson. He is a contributing editor to The Monthly magazine, and its former US Correspondent. He has been published by many others, including the Washington Post, The New York Times, The Guardian, The New Republic, WIRED and…