Safdar Ahmed is an award-winning artist, writer, musician and cultural worker. His graphic novel Still Alive won the Multicultural NSW Award and was named Book of the Year in the 2022 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards. Still Alive also won the 2022 Eve Pownall Award and a Gold Ledger in the 2022 Comic Arts Awards of Australia. Safdar is a founding member of the Refugee Art Project and a member of eleven, a collective of contemporary Muslim Australian artists, curators and writers. 

Camille Booker is an author, editor, literary judge, creative writing teacher, and PhD student. She writes gothic historical fiction with morally grey female protagonists and unique Australian settings. She has a bachelor’s degree in creative writing and is currently pursuing her PhD, also in Creative Writing at the University of Wollongong, where she tutors Genre and Form. Her thesis aims to explore how contemporary novels are embracing the figure of the witch to reveal power structures within society. The Woman In The Waves is her award-winning second novel. 

Dr Caroline Butler-Bowdon began in the role of State Librarian in November 2023. She is a published author and curator of architecture and urban history and has 20 years of executive leadership experience in public institutions, including the Historic Houses Trust and the Art Gallery of NSW. Her career has been dedicated to leadership that connects citizens and visitors to special places, culture and heritage through a broad range of statewide public engagement programs.

Ryan Butta’s first work of historical non-fiction, The Ballad of Abdul Wade, was shortlisted for the South Australian Literary Awards non-fiction book of the year for 2024, longlisted for the Indie Book Awards non-fiction book of the year for 2023. Ryan's latest work, The Bravest Scout at Gallipoli, retells the remarkable life story of Harry Freame, a Japanese-Australian adventurer, soldier of fortune, Anzac, orchardist and spy. Ryan's writing has appeared in the Good Weekend Magazine and he is a regular contributor to Galah Press. Ryan lives on Dharawal country on the NSW South Coast. 

Isobelle Carmody is a multi-award-winning Australian author who has written over 40 novels and many short stories. She has illustrated eight books and her work has been translated into many languages. She recently completed a PhD at the University of Queensland, followed by 18 months of Postgraduate research. Her most recent work is Comes the Night, which has been shortlisted for the Indie Book Awards. She is currently working on Darkbane, the third in her Legendsong series, and a graphic novel called Saltsong. 

Eileen Chong is a poet of Hakka, Hokkien and Peranakan descent. She is the author of 11 books. We Speak of Flowers (UQP, 2025) is her most recent collection. Her work has shortlisted for many major awards, including the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award, twice for the NSW Premier’s Literary Award, and twice for the Prime Minister’s Literary Award. She lives and works on unceded Gadigal land. 

Dr Ellie Crookes is a lecturer in English Literatures at the University of Wollongong. She specialises in the study of late-medieval Britain, Ireland, and France; examining how texts, legends, and characters of the medieval past have been adopted, adapted, and manipulated to suit the needs of artists, writers, and activists globally in the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries. Her research focuses primarily on issues of gender, race, empire, and the occult. Her co-edited collection Medievalism and Reception was published in 2024, and her first monograph Joans of Arc Worldwide is due for publication this year.

Meredith Curnow has her dream job at Penguin Random House where she is a publisher of fiction and non fiction. A proud board member of the literary arts organisation for young people, Express Media, and Varuna, the National Writers' House, Meredith chairs the editorial working group of the APA. 

Dr Debra Dank is a Gudanji/Wakaja and Kalkadoon woman from the Barkly Tablelands in the Northern Territory, and Enterprise Fellow with the University of South Australia. She has spent 40 years working in primary, secondary and tertiary education roles, in urban and remote areas across Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and the Northern Territory. She is interested in multiform narrative and its practice in Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal communities and the role semiotics plays in that. Her book, We Come with This Place, won numerous honours in 2023, including four New South Wales Premier’s Awards and the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal.

Theodore Ell lived in Lebanon from 2018 to 2021, accompanying his wife on a diplomatic posting. Ell's essay 'Façades of Lebanon', about Lebanese revolution and the Beirut port explosion, won the 2021 Calibre Essay Prize. His poetry collection Beginning in Sight shared the 2022 Anne Elder Award. Ell's poetry, essays, translations and non-fiction have been published in Australia, Italy, the United Kingdom and Lebanon. He is the co-founder of international journal Contrappasso Magazine and an honorary lecturer in literature at the Australian National University. 

Adara Enthaler is a spoken word poet and community arts organiser working on Dharawal land in Wollongong. Adara is the host of Enough Said Poetry Slam, co-organiser of the Strange Folds Zine Fair, an MC for events across the Illawarra, has featured as a spoken word poet at festivals and poetry slams across NSW, and her writing has appeared in numerous anthologies from Baby Teeth Journal and Heroines Festival, as well as her poetry zines Equidistant (2018) and Crowdsourced Poems (2022). 

Joel Ephraims is Sri Lankan-Australian poet who writes with a surreal, political and autobiographical style. In 2011 he won the Overland Judith Wright Prize for new and emerging poets. In 2022 he published his first full-length collection of poetry, Biota, with the experimental small press Apothecary Archive. His latest book, Flying Car Kaleidoscope, was published by Vagabond Press in 2024. He is currently writing a ‘participatory and conceptual’ novel, 15^238, that explores the formal and ethical dynamics of NLP (Natural Language Processing) AI as part of a PhD at the University of Sydney. 

Tim Flannery is an evolutionary biologist and climate activist. He was Australian of the Year in 2007 and climate commissioner 2011 –  2013. He is currently involved in community conservation initiatives of rainforest in Melanesia. 

Dr Kate Forsyth is an award-winning, bestselling author who has been called one of ‘the finest writers of this generation’. Her novels include Psykhe, a feminist reimagining of the ancient myth which foregrounds the woman at its heart; The Crimson Thread, set in Crete during World War II; and Bitter Greens, a retelling of Rapunzel which won the American Library Award for Best Historical Fiction. Children’s books include Kate Forsyth’s Long-Lost Fairy Tales, illustrated by Lorena Carrington. Kate has a BA in literature, a MA in creative writing & a Doctorate of Creative Arts, and runs writing and literary retreats in Australia, Greece and the UK. 

Helena Fox is an author, poet, and writing mentor living on beautiful Dharawal Country. The founder of the SCWC Young Writers Program, Helena has led creative writing workshops for people of all ages for over sixteen years. She is the author of two novels, How It Feels to Float and The Quiet and the Loud, published in Australia and internationally. Her novels have won the Prime Minister's Literary Award and Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Writing for Young Adults, and the NSW Literary Award's Ethel Turner Prize for Young People's Literature. 

Jan Fran is a Walkley-award winning journalist, TV Presenter and online content creator. She is the co-host of the ABC’s Question Everything and is also known for presenting Channel 10’s The Project and SBS’s The Feed. Her latest project is Conspiracy? War on the Waterfront, a six-part ABC investigative series on the 1998 Waterfront dispute. 

Peter Frankis lives and writes on unceded Wadi Wadi land in Port Kembla south of Sydney. His first poetry chapbook, Shorely, was published by Ginninderra Press; his poetry has come close in a number of competitions (no cigar yet) and appeared in journals including The Crow, The Ekphrastic Journal and Cordite.

Zahid Gamieldien is an author, screenwriter, editor and writing tutor. His debut novel is All the Missing Children, which has been optioned to be developed into a television series. His short fiction has been published in literary journals including Overland, Meanjin, Kill Your Darlings, Island Magazine and many others. His work has also been listed for the Richell Prize and selected for inclusion in the ‘best of’ fortieth anniversary edition of The UTS Writers’ Anthology. He’s received two major Create NSW grants and funding to undertake a residency at Varuna House. His second novel will likely be released in 2026. 

Nikki Gemmell is known as one of Australia’s most provocative and honest writers. She’s the bestselling author of some twenty books, including Shiver, The Bride Stripped Bare and Wing, a searing examination of what it means to be female today, through the lens of an Australian high school. Nikki was born in Wollongong and is a proud alumnae of Keiraville Public School. Her books have been translated into 22 languages. 

Dr Christine Howe is a writer and academic who lectures in Creative Writing at the University of Wollongong. Christine works across various genres – fiction, poetry and essays – and increasingly works and writes collaboratively. Her first novel, Song in the Dark, was published by Penguin, and her short works have appeared in the Griffith Review, Island, Cordite, TEXT, and Law, Text, Culture, as well as anthologies published by Spineless Wonders Press and Recent Work Press. 

Myoung Jae Yi is the Creative Director of Headland Writers Festival, a content producer at ABC South East NSW, a freelance podcast producer, musician, composer and manager of Candelo Books—an independent bookstore in Bega, NSW. Myoung lives on the Far South Coast of NSW on Djirringanj country. 

Meredith Jaffé is the author of four novels for adults — The Tricky Art of Forgiveness, The Dressmakers of Yarrandarrah Prison, The Making of Christina and The Fence. Her bestselling novel, The Dressmakers of Yarrandarrah Prison, was voted in the 2023 and the 2022 Better Reading Top 100 and the 2021 Booktopia Favourite Australian Book Award Top 50. She’s the former Festival Director of StoryFest and regularly runs workshops and facilitates at author events. Previously, she wrote the weekly literary column for the online women’s magazine The Hoopla. Her writing has also appeared in the Guardian Australia, The Huffington Post, and Mamamia. 

Gail Jones is Emeritus Professor of Writing at the University of Western Sydney. She is the author of two short-story collections and eleven novels, which include Sixty Lights, One Another and most recently, The Name of the Sister (2025). Shortlisted four times for the Miles Franklin Award, her prizes include the Prime Minister’s Fiction Prize, the Age Book of the Year, and the ASAL Gold Medal. She has also been longlisted for the Man Booker and shortlisted for the Dublin IMPAC and the Prix Femina Étranger and translated into many languages. She lives in Sydney. 

Lauren Keegan is a perinatal psychologist, writer and mother who lives on Dharawal and Gundungarra country in Wollondilly, NSW. She has worked extensively in perinatal and infant mental health and is an editor at Perspectives in Infant Mental Health, a publication of WAIMH (World Association for Infant Mental Health). She has two young girls and drinks more tea than is sensible. All the Bees in the Hollows is her debut novel. 

Malcolm Knox grew up in Sydney. Since 1994 Malcolm has written for the Sydney Morning Herald and has won three Walkley Awards and a Human Rights Award. His novels include Summerland; A Private Man, winner of the Ned Kelly Award; Jamaica, which won the Colin Roderick Award and was shortlisted in the 2008 Prime Minister’s Literary Awards; The Life; The Wonder Lover; Bluebird; and most recently The First Friend. His many non-fiction titles include Boom: The Underground History of Australia, From Gold Rush to GFC, which won the 2013 Ashurst Business Literature Prize; and Bradman’s War, shortlisted in the 2013 Prime Minister's Literary Awards.  

Jeremy Lasek is an experienced journalist, marketing and media professional who has held senior executive roles in government, the private sector, the National Australia Day Council and the Australian Federal Police. Locally, Jeremy started his career reporting for the Lake Times before working in the ABC Illawarra and WINTV newsrooms. After a successful career in Canberra Jeremy has returned to the Illawarra where he continues his writing with the Illawarra Flame. 

Suzanne Leal is the author of novels The Watchful Wife, The Teacher’s Secret and The Deceptions, winner of the Nib People’s Choice Prize. Her debut novel for middle-grade readers, Running with Ivan, is on the Children’s Book Council of Australia Notables List for Younger Readers and was shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s History Awards and the ARA Historical Novel Prize. An experienced facilitator and interviewer, Suzanne is the founder of Thursday Book Club, a relaxed book club connecting readers online. The Year We Escaped is her new novel for middle-grade readers.  

Dr Joshua Lobb is Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Wollongong. His stories and essays have appeared in The Bridport Prize Anthology, Best Australian Stories, Animal Studies Journal, Griffith Review, Plumwood Mountain, Axon, Unlikely, Text and Southerly. His ‘novel in stories’ about grief and climate change, The Flight of Birds (Sydney University Press, 2019) was shortlisted for the 2019 Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction and the 2020 Mascara Literary Review Avant Garde Awards for Best Fiction. He is also part of the multi-authored project, 100 Atmospheres: Studies in Scale and Wonder (Open Humanities Press, 2019).

Antony Loewenstein is an independent journalist, film-maker and author of the global best-selling book, The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports The Technology Of Occupation Around The World. It's also now a podcast and documentary film series. 

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 Centre at the University of Sydney and the 2023 HC Coombs Creative Arts Fellow at the Australian National University. Emily has an MA in literature and works as a mentor to young and emerging writers. Her latest book is the novel, Rapture. 

Charlotte McConaghy is the author of the New York Times Bestseller Once There Were Wolves, winner of the Indie Book Award for Fiction 2022; and the international bestseller Migrations, a TIME Magazine Best Book of the Year and the Amazon Best Fiction Book of the Year for 2020, translated into over twenty-five languages and adapted for film. Her forthcoming novel, Wild Dark Shore, will be released in March 2025. 

Catherine McKinnon’s novel To Sing of War (Fourth Estate HarperCollins) was published in 2024 to critical acclaim. Her novel Storyland  (2017 Fourth Estate HarperCollins) was shortlisted for the 2018 Miles Franklin Literary Award, the 2018 Barbara Jefferis Award, the 2018 Voss Literary Prize and was named one of ABC TV’s The Book Club’s Five of the Best in 2017. Storyland is being adapted into a play by Catherine and Aunty Barb Nicholson, produced by IPAC. Her short stories and essays have appeared in Text Journal, Griffith Review, Meanjin, Narrative, Sydney Review of Books, The Australian, Island, and Sydney Morning Herald. She teaches creative writing at the University of Wollongong.  

Judi Morison’s writing has been published in various literary anthologies and she was the recipient of the 2022 Boundless Indigenous Writer’s Mentorship, a 2024 Roderick Centre Online Fellowship and 2024 Cultivate Mentorship. Her novel Secrets will be released later this year and her historical novel, Crossing the Creek, shortlisted for The Australian Fiction Prize 2025, will be published in 2026, both by Simon & Schuster’s Bundyi imprint. Judi has Gamilaraay and Celtic heritage and lives on Gumbaynggirr Country. She has a long involvement with the Dreaming Inside project and leads SCWC’s Emerging Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Writers Mentoring Program. 

Bruce Nash is the author of three novels, the most recent of which is All the Words We Know, a psychological mystery told from the point of view of a woman with dementia. It was published in 2024 in Australia, the USA and internationally in translation. His two previous novels are An Island in the Lake and The Long River of Cat Fisher. Bruce is a retired secondary school English teacher and lives in Bermagui. 

Lucy Nelson is the author of Wait Here, a collection of short fiction published by Simon and Schuster (2025). Her work has been published in Meanjin, Kill Your Darlings, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Big Issue, Southword and elsewhere. She has received the Newcastle Short Story Award, the Writing NSW Varuna Fellowship and the Templeberg Fellowship from Writers Victoria. Lucy studied Professional Writing and Editing at RMIT and is represented by literary agent Martin Shaw. She lives and works on Dharawal and Wodi Wodi Country. 

Vanessa Radnidge is the Head of Narrative Non-Fiction and Head of Literary at Hachette and her passion is for connecting great storytellers and great stories with readers. She publishes fiction and non-fiction and is very proud to have worked with Favel Parrett, Mark Brandi, Michael Mohammed Ahmad, Stephanie Bishop, Brooke Davis, Catherine Therese, Deng Adut, John Farnham, Mark Hunt, Dr Norman Swan, Geraldine Brooks, Hilde Hinton, Nardi Simpson, Chris Flynn and Winnie Dunn to name just a few.

Malika Reese was born in California to a White and a Black writer. As an emcee, teacher, speaker, writer, musician, producer and storyteller, Malika has been performing for over 20 years. She has performed at many places, including TEDx, Woodford Folk Festival and Sydney Opera House. She is a founding member of The Church of the Clitori and soon to publish a book about death for little ones. An advocate about CSA, she also works with Women’s groups to speak against DV.

Amy Remeikis writes, talks and analyses Australian politics across Australia’s media as the political analyst at the Australia Institute. Most recently at the Guardian, Amy is an author and political blogger and appears regularly on ABC programs and Network Ten’s The Project. 

Darren Rix, a Gunditjmara-GunaiKurnai man with Ngarigo bloodlines, grew up in the tin huts and tents of ‘Silver City’, South Nowra, with his eleven siblings. His family later got their first house in the Bega Valley, and he attended school in Bega. At fourteen, Darren moved to Ngunnawal country – Canberra – to which he has songline ties through his Ngarigo bloodlines. He has worked as a radio reporter for the Brisbane Indigenous Media Association, and with the Ngunnawal people as a cultural sites officer in Canberra. Darren is an accomplished musician, as was his uncle, Archie Roach.

Lillian Rodrigues-Pang is an internationally acclaimed, award-winning storyteller. Her performances intertwine the oral tradition with, percussion, movement and improvisation to captivate and transport audiences. She works in community to develop your story, discover and play with oral storytelling traditions and as a dramaturg. She is also a cultural event curator. Lillian is a published poet and (bilingual/cultural) storyteller. Lillian will create worlds for you with words, movement and music. 

Omar Sakr is the son of Arab and Turkish Muslim migrants. He is the author of four collections of poetry and a novel, Son of Sin (Affirm Press, 2022). In 2020, he became the first Arab-Australian to win the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Poetry with his collection, The Lost Arabs. His most recent book, The Nightmare Sequence (UQP, 2025), is a collaboration with artist Safdar Ahmed responding to the genocide in Palestine. Royalties from the sale of this book will be donated to Palestinian charities. 

Hayley Scrivenor’s internationally published debut novel, Dirt Town, became an instant #1 Australian bestseller in 2022. It has been translated into multiple languages and won a number of national and international awards, including an ABIA for General Fiction Book of the Year, a Lambda Literary award for LGBTQ+ Mystery, a Davitt Award for Best Debut Crime Book, and a Crime Writers’ Association ‘New Blood’ Dagger. Hayley holds a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Wollongong and lives on Dharawal country. Girl Falling is her second novel. 

Nardi Simpson is a Yuwaalaraay storyteller and performer living in Sydney. Training as a musician, Nardi began her artistic journey as a songwriter and performer with vocal duo Stiff Gins. Nardi was a winner of the 2018 Black & Write! Fellowship for a manuscript that would eventually become her first novel, Song of the Crocodile, published in 2020 by Hachette Australia. Song of the Crocodile won the 2021 ASAL Gold Medal and was long listed for the 2021 Stella Prize and Miles Franklin Awards. Nardi's second novel the belburd was published by Hachette in October 2024.

Ali Jane Smith’s poems have been published in literary journals, including Southerly, Cordite, Australian Poetry Journal and Overland. She is a Red Room Poetry and Varuna Alumni. In 2018 she was shortlisted for the David Harold Tribe Poetry Prize and in 2016 she was one of three writers selected for the inaugural Sydney Review of Books Emerging Critics program. 

David Stavanger is a poet, producer, and former psychologist living on Wodi Wodi Dharawal land. He is the co-editor of Solid Air: Australian & New Zealand Spoken Word (UQP, 2019), Admissions: Voices Within Mental Health (Upswell, 2022), and is the author of Case Notes which won the 2021 Victorian Premier's Prize for Poetry—his new collection is The Drop Off (Upswell, 2025). David works as an Artistic Director at Red Room Poetry. 

Allison Tait (A. L. Tait) is an internationally published, bestselling author of 11 middle-grade novels. Her three epic fantasy adventure series – The Mapmaker Chronicles, The Ateban Cipher, and Maven & Reeve Mysteries – have been shortlisted and longlisted for various awards. In 2024, her first contemporary middle-grade novel The First Summer of Callie McGee was longlisted for the Margaret and Colin Roderick Literary Award. Willow Bright’s Secret Plot and Danger Road will both be published in 2025.

Jessie Tu is a journalist for Women’s Agenda and a book critic for The Age and Sydney Morning Herald. Her bestselling debut novel, A Lonely Girl is a Dangerous Thing, won the 2021 Best Literary Fiction at the Australian Book Industry Awards. Her second novel is The Honeyeater. 

Elizabeth Weiss is a publisher and digital publishing director at Allen & Unwin.

Pip Williams is best known for her companion novels, The Dictionary of Lost Words and The Bookbinder of Jericho. The Dictionary of Lost Words has been translated into more than thirty languages, won multiple awards, was chosen for the Reese Witherspoon book club and is a New York Times best seller. It has been optioned for screen and the stage play is currently touring Australia after sold out audiences in 2023/2024. Her latest book, The Bookbinder of Jericho, has all the power and emotion of the first. It too is an award winner and has been translated into multiple languages. 

Kell Woods is an Australian historical fantasy author. She has studied English literature, creative writing, and history, and writes about made-up (and not so made-up) places, people and things you might remember from the fairy tales you read as a child. Her books, however, are most definitely not for children. After the Forest is a dark and enchanting re-telling of ‘Hansel and Gretel’ set in Early Modern Germany, while Upon A Starlit Tide blends elements of ‘The Little Mermaid’ and ‘Cinderella’ against an eighteenth-century French setting.