Emily Chantiri is a Sydney journalist and best-selling author. Emily's books include The Money Club and The Savvy Girl's Guide to Money which were published by Random House and Murdoch Books. In her journalistic work, she writes across areas of business, money, IT and much more. She has interviewed many leading professionals and politicians. Emily writes for SMH, The Age, Yahoo, Forbes Business and Information Age. Emily is passionate about writing and helping others along their writing journey. She runs the Sydney Non-Fiction Writer's Group under the NSW Writer's Group. Emily mentors and chairs the monthly meetings.
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Website: https://emilychantiri.com/

Peggy Giakoumelos is a multimedia journalist, podcast producer, presenter and writer working professionally across audio and digital. She has a special interest in human interest story-telling and has produced a number of award-winning published profiles on a range of individuals in both audio and text format. She currently produces a podcast series for SBS News in Sydney, Change Agents, profiling individuals changing the community we live in. She is also a newsreader, voice coach, fiction writer, trainer and occasional MC. Peggy is working on her first book length work of fiction due to be completed in 2024. 
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Website: https://www.peggygiakoumelos.net/about-me

Meera Atkinson publishes creative nonfiction, fiction, poetry, and hybrid forms. Her writing has appeared in publications such as Salon.com, Best Australian Poems, Best Australian Stories, Meanjin, Southerly, and Griffith Review, and her hybrid memoir, Traumata, was published in 2018. Meera has also worked for many years as a university creative writing educator. She has a special interest and particular expertise in writing about traumatic experiences.
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Laurel is passionate about communication and the power of words to engage, inspire and challenge. Since the late 1980s she has been helping writers of all types prepare their work for publication. With a well-honed ability to analyse and critique texts, she gets a buzz out of helping writers understand how they can lift their work to the next level of development. Laurel’s approach to giving feedback is informed by an understanding of the sometimes tricky emotional terrain of the development process, and the importance of honest, clear and practical guidance. Laurel is a regular workshop presenter for Writing NSW, Writers Victoria, Queensland Writers Centre, Writers SA, Byron Writers Festival, Society of Women Writers and Art of Writing retreats (Italy/Australia). She has a PhD in literary and cultural studies.
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Website: https://laurelcohn.com.au

Jan Cornall began her career as a writer in 1979 at the Pram Factory in Melbourne, penning the acclaimed musical Failing In Love Again. Following its success she went on to be awarded a number of grants and fellowships and has written over fifteen plays, musicals, screenplays, a novel, travel memoir, a collection of stories and poems, and three song albums. Based in Newtown, Sydney, Jan has a Masters Degree in Cultural and Creative Practice and since 2000, has taught writing at writer’s centres, community colleges, universities (UTS, WSU) and led international writing retreats. She has performed her work at numerous festivals in the Asia Pacific region and collaborated with artists, poets and musicians in Indonesia and Burma. Dedicated to nurturing the unique voice of each writer she works with Jan offers mentoring support and guidance to writers of all genres. Numerous authors working with Jan have gone on to publish with major publishing houses.
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Website: http://www.writersjourney.com.au

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, was shortlisted for the 2017 Christina Stead Prize for Fiction in the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards. The Crying Room was published in 2023. Gretchen has taught in the undergraduate and postgraduate creative writing programs at the University of Technology, Sydney, the University of Sydney and Western Sydney University. She teaches the Writing a Novel at Faber Academy. Prior to turning to teaching, Gretchen worked as a public law lawyer for over ten years. Her fiction has been published in Griffith Review, Overland, Meanjin, Best Australian Stories amongst other places. Her criticism is regularly published in The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and The Australian. Gretchen is interested in novels, short stories, novellas and life writing.
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Website: https://gretchenshirm.com

Greg Woodland leans towards genre writing. Mostly crime, thriller, black comedy and noir. The darker the better. His debut crime novel The Night Whistler was published by Text Publishing in 2020 and shortlisted for the 2021 Ned Kelly Awards, Best Debut Crime Fiction. The sequel The Carnival Is Over was published by Text in 2022. It was shortlisted for the 2023 Ned Kelly Awards, Best Crime Fiction. Greg has won several writing awards including the Eleanor Dark Flagship Fellowship (2004), the Varuna NSW Writers Centre Fellowship (2013) for his novel Pangs, the Varuna Litlink Fellowship (2014), the Bundanon Artist’s Residency Fellowship (2015) for The Night Whistler, and the 2017 ASA Writers Mentorship for Fiction. Greg has previously written and directed several award-winning short films (Tripe, Sharky’s Party, Green, Target Audience, Your Turn) and docos including Chasing Birds. Greg has written ten feature scripts and taught screenwriting at Macquarie Uni, UTS, NIDA, Australian Film Base and AFTRS, both online courses and weekend workshops. As the founder-director of Australia’s leading script development business, Script Central since 2003, Greg has edited many produced scripts including ‘Shayda’, ‘Moon Rock for Monday’, ‘Don’t Tell’, ‘Broken’, ‘Needle’, ‘The Bet’, ‘Cold Turkey' and completed over 2,000 script assessments.
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Website: https://gregwoodland.com.au

Ashley Kalagian Blunt is a bestselling author and speaker living with chronic illness. Her psychological thriller, Dark Mode, is published in Australia and the UK, and forthcoming in Germany and South Korea. Her previous books are How to Be Australian, a memoir, and My Name Is Revenge, a thriller novella and collected essays. My Name Is Revenge was shortlisted for the 2019 Woollahra Digital Literary Awards and was a finalist in the 2018 Carmel Bird Digital Literary Award. Her writing appears in Griffith Review, Sydney Review of Books, Overland, Australian Book Review, Sydney Morning Herald, Openbook, Kill Your Darlings, and more. She was shortlisted for the 2018 Impress Prize for New Writers and the 2017 Kill Your Darlings Unpublished Manuscript Award. An award-winning speaker, Ashley has appeared at Sydney Writers’ Festival and Brisbane Writers’ Festival, and is a Moth StorySLAM winner. She co-hosts James and Ashley Stay at Home, a podcast about writing, creativity and health, and was a judge in the 2020 Writing NSW Varuna Fellowship. With a decade of experience in teaching and curriculum design, she now teaches creative writing courses and mentors emerging writers. She has a Master of Research in creative writing.
Website: https://www.ashleykalagianblunt.com

Shankari Chandran is an Australian Tamil lawyer and author of Song of the Sun God, The Barrier and Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens, which won the Miles Franklin Literary Award 2023. Song of the Sun God was long-listed for the International Dublin Literary Award (2019) and short-listed for Sri Lanka's Fairway National Literary Award (2018). The Barrier was short-listed for the Norma K Hemming Award for Speculative Fiction (2018). Song of the Sun God is being adapted for television, starring Bridgerton’s Charithra Chandran (no relation). Her next two novels will be published in 2024. Her short stories have been published in the critically acclaimed anthologies, Another Australia and Sweatshop Women (Vol 2) by Affirm Press/Sweatshop and she is the deputy chair of Writing NSW. Shankari has spent two decades working as a lawyer in the social justice field, on national and international program design and delivery. She continues her work in social impact for an Australian national retailer. She is based in Sydney, Australia.
Website: https://shankarichandran.com