Emily Maguire is the author of six novels, including the Stella Prize and Miles Franklin shortlisted An Isolated Incident, and three non-fiction books. Emily’s articles and essays on sex, feminism, culture and literature have been published widely including in The Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian, The Observer and The Age. Emily works as a teacher and as a mentor to emerging and established writers, was the 2018/2019 Writer-in-Residence at the Charles Perkins Centre at the University of Sydney and is the 2023 HC Coombs Creative Arts Fellow at the Australian National University. Her latest book is the novel Love Objects.
Website: https://www.emilymaguire.com.au

Ivy Ireland is the author of the poetry collections Incidental Complications (2007), Porch Light (2015), The Owl Inside (2020) and Tide (forthcoming, 2023). Ivy’s literary awards include the Australian Young Poet Fellowship, the Olga Masters Short Story Award, the Harri Jones Memorial Prize, the Thunderbolt Prize, the Newcastle Poetry Prize local award, and runner-up in the UC International Poetry Prize. Ivy completed her PhD in 2012 and her poetry, short fiction, essays and reviews have been widely published in journals and anthologies. Ivy enjoys teaching, editing and running workshops for aspiring writers.
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Kavita Bedford is an Australian-Indian writer with a background in media, anthropology and literature. She is passionate about telling stories from new perspectives that are traditionally left out of the mainstream. Her first novel, Friends & Dark Shapes, was published in 2021 in USA, Italy and Australia to critical response including reviews in The New York Times, The Guardian, and was Shortlisted for the Queensland and NSW Premiers’ Literary Awards and Small Press Network’s Book of the Year. She was the 2021 Writer in Residence at The Writing and Society Research Centre at Western Sydney University. She was the Editor of The Point Magazine for MNSW, which explored countering violent extremism and she was the creative producer of a digital media project exploring diverse stories from South-West Sydney. She has worked as a research fellow for UTS on digital diasporas and she was a Churchill Fellow exploring migrant narratives between Australia and Europe. Her non-fiction and short stories have appeared in numerous publications including Guernica, The Guardian, The Saturday Paper, Griffith Review. She teaches across anthropology, journalism, writing, and Hatha yoga and loves focusing on issues of voice, place, authenticity, representation, writing practice and embodied creativity.
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Website: https://www.kavitabedford.com

Hilary Bell is an award-winning playwright, lyricist and librettist. Her plays and musicals have been produced nationally by Griffin, Ensemble, Sydney Theatre Company, Black Swan, the Sydney Opera House, Arts Centre Melbourne, Deckchair, La Boite, State Theatre Company of South Australia, City Recital Hall, NORPA, Darlinghurst Theatre Company, National Theatre of Parramatta, NIDA and Vitalstatistix; in the US by Atlantic and Steppenwolf; in the UK by the National Theatre. Hilary has written audio-scripts for the Museum of Contemporary Art and the State Library of NSW. The recipient of awards including the inaugural Philip Parsons, the Jill Blewitt, a Helpmann and two AWGIES, and shortlisted for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, Hilary is co-creator of several picture books, including Numerical Street, Summer Time and bestseller Alphabetical Sydney with Antonia Pesenti. She is a member of 7-On Playwrights and a graduate of the Juilliard Playwrights’ Program, NIDA and AFTRS. She was the Tennessee Williams Fellow 2003-04 and the 2012 Patrick White Playwrights’ Fellow at the STC. She has served on boards including Griffin, ANPC and Australian Plays, and is currently a Visiting Scholar at the State Library of NSW. She loves visiting schools and running workshops around her picture books.
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Website: https://hilarybell.org/

Story analyst and playwright Timothy Daly is one of Australia’s most internationally-produced playwrights, with a string of national and international productions and awards to his credit. Actors such as Academy-Award winners Cate Blanchett and Geoffrey Rush have appeared in his plays. His play, Derrida In Love, was written expressly for the 2011 & 2013 Academy Award nominee, Jacki Weaver, which she performed in a sold-out production in Sydney. His play Kafka Dances has won over a dozen national and international awards since its première, and is the most internationally-performed Australian play of all time. His play The Man in the Attic was awarded Australia’s most prestigious award for a new play, the Patrick White Playwrights’ Award. Timothy Daly’s 500-page book 21st Century Playwriting was published in 2019 by Smith & Kraus, New York’s top theatre book publisher. With over 30 years experience in writing, Timothy Daly has conducted many workshops in writing, narrative and dramatic structure on three continents, and has consulted with hundreds of writers and advised on hundreds of stories, novels, plays and scripts.
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Website: http://timothydalywriter.com

Amy Lovat is the author of Mistakes and Other Lovers (Pan Macmillan 2023) and the founder of online bookstore Secret Book Stuff. She has a PhD from the University of Newcastle where she's taught creative writing and the humanities for almost a decade. Amy is a professional editor and proofreader and has worked as a copywriter, subeditor and ghostwriter. She’s the former Program Manager of Writing NSW and current Program Manager of the Newcastle Writers Festival. Amy loves mentoring emerging writers, helping people tell stories with heart, and immersing herself in books and words.
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Website: https://amylovat.com

Sara M Saleh is an award-winning writer/poet, human rights lawyer, and the daughter of migrants from Palestine, Egypt, and Lebanon. Her poems, short stories, and essays have been widely published nationally in English and Arabic. She is co-editor of the groundbreaking 2019 anthology Arab, Australian, Other. Sara made history as the first poet to win both the Australian Book Review's 2021 Peter Porter Poetry Prize and the Overland Judith Wright Poetry Prize 2020. Sara lives on Bidjigal land with her partner and their cats, Cappy & Lola. Songs for the Dead and the Living is her first novel and her full-length poetry collection, The Flirtation of Girls/Ghazal el-Banat is forthcoming at the end of 2023.
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Website: https://www.saramsaleh.com/

Eleanor is the author of four novels: The Coast (Allen & Unwin, 2022), The Passengers (Allen & Unwin, 2018), Long Bay (Sleepers Publishing, 2015) and What Was Left (Sleepers Publishing, 2013, shortlisted for the ALS Gold Medal). Her short fiction and essays have been published various places including Best Australian Stories, Meanjin, Sydney Noir, Griffith Review, Kill Your Darlings and The Big Issue. She’s been the recipient of various residencies, scholarships and grants including from the Australia Council, Copyright Agency, Varuna and the Australian Society of Authors. Eleanor was a lecturer in creative writing at UTS and now teaches novel writing at the Faber Academy. She is the Chair of Writing NSW. Areas of interest include: historical fiction, family history, archives, contemporary fiction, short fiction, memoir and narrative non-fiction.
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Website: https://eleanorlimprecht.com