Abigail Nathan is a freelance editor who has run Bothersome Words Editing & Writing Services for more than twelve years. She specialises in fiction (including genre — fantasy, science fiction, horror, crime, suspense, romance etc.) for adults, young adults and middle grade, and works with major Australian and UK trade publishers including HarperCollins, Penguin Random House, Hachette and Gollancz; as well as small presses in the USA. She has edited a range of authors for these publishers, including Karen Miller, Traci Harding, Alastair Reynolds and James Barclay. In addition, she works regularly with emerging and self-publishing writers including authors such as Mitchell Hogan and Maria Lewis. Abigail was a committee member and website coordinator for Editors NSW for over ten years and occasionally presents workshops on editing, self-publishing and freelancing.

Diana Giese has worked for publishers large and small, including Macmillan, Oxford University Press, HarperEducational and Brandl & Schlesinger, in Australia and overseas. She has collaborated with many writers to help them develop their best possible work, and produced and promoted prize-winners and excellent sellers. She is the author of six books, including Astronauts, Lost Souls and Dragons (University of Queensland Press), Beyond Chinatown (National Library of Australia) and A better place to live (Freshwater Bay Press). She has also worked as a literary journalist for major newspapers and ABC radio, and served on writers’ festival and prize committees. A recent mentoree placed his first book with a major international publisher. Diana will help you produce memoirs, fiction and history.

EMILY MAGUIRE is the author of five novels and three non-fiction books. Her latest novel, An Isolated Incident was shortlisted for the Stella Prize, the ABIA Literary Fiction Book of the Year and the Miles Franklin Literary Award.

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 young and emerging writers and was the 2018/2019 Writer-inResidence at the Charles Perkins Centre at the University of Sydney.

Important note: Emily Maguire will not be accepting new mentees until late 2026. 

Eugen Bacon is an African Australian author. She’s a British Fantasy and Foreword Indies Award winner, a twice World Fantasy Award finalist, and a finalist in the Shirley Jackson, Philip K. Dick, Victorian Premier’s Literary Award (for her novel Serengotti), and the Nommo Awards for speculative fiction by Africans. Eugen was announced in the honor list of the Otherwise Fellowships for ‘doing exciting work in gender and speculative fiction’. Danged Black Thing made the Otherwise Award Honor List as a ‘sharp collection of Afro-Surrealist work’. She’s an Adjunct Fellow at the University of Tasmania, and a 2024 Hedberg Writer-in-Residence.

Eugen’s approach to mentoring: Equate advising a writer that their work is inadequate to telling a mother that her baby is ugly. To be published, the writer must, inevitably, give others entry to their precious world. The right mentor—author, supervisor, peer reviewer or editor— will position the artist to arrive at an articulate product. A repressive mentor is dangerous because they may, for more than a moment, stifle creative energy, humiliate the writer, perhaps usurp authorship, and inevitably lead to unproductive outcomes. An adventurous mentor nurtures, peaks ability, and introduces important tensions, surging from vital interrogations and finding answers to them, tensions that add value to the writing. I am an award-winning and experienced author, editor, teacher and mentor. I would like to think of myself as a mentor who is an axis for growth, one most focused in a respectful partnership that helps to draw out the best form of the author’s work now and into the future.

Fiona Kelly McGregor is a writer, artist, critic, teacher and mentor with over thirty years’ experience. McGregor has published eight books and won a variety of awards, including The Age Book of the Year for Indelible Ink, a Queensland Literary Award (Steel Rudd) for short story collection Suck my Toes and the Woollahra Digital Literary Award for essay ‘The Hot Desk’. Recent nominations include the Miles Franklin, the NSW Premiers’ Award, and the Stella Prize for the novel Iris. McGregor has conducted seminars at universities and given lectures internationally on topics pertaining to writing, performance art, urban histories, memoir, street life, activism, LGBTIQ culture and politics, and more. McGregor has taught a range of creative writing subjects including fiction both long and short, narrative non-fiction, and arts and music criticism. McGregor has also taught English as a second language and mentored extensively, with several mentees progressing to publication and being shortlisted for awards. McGregor is based in Sydney, on unceded Gadigal land.

Fiona Murphy is an award-winning writer, editor and arts critic. She has been widely published, including in The Guardian, ABC, The Saturday Paper, Griffith Review, The Big Issue. In 2021, her memoir, The Shape of Sound was released in Australia, New Zealand, UK and North America. It was highly commended in the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards. She regularly lectures on creative writing and facilitates creative writing workshops. She is a MacDowell Fellow (2022) and Peter Blazey Fellow (2024).

Keith Stevenson is the author of Horizon: an SF thriller (HarperCollins) and The Lenticular Series: Traitor’s Run (finalist in the Aurealis Awards for Best SF Novel), Traitor’s Bargain, and Traitor’s War. On Traitor’s Run, Kirkus Reviews said, “The author’s gift for xenofiction matches that of genre grandmasters like Hal Clement, Larry Niven, and C.J. Cherryh” and Aurealis Magazine described it as, “wild and expansive, and just so utterly out there”. He’s also a past editor of Aurealis Magazineand Dimension6 as well as a number of anthologies including X6 (which won the World Fantasy Award for Margo Langan’s “Sea-Hearts”), and Anywhere But Earth. Keith brings his critical skills as a writer and editor immersed in the SF, Fantasy and Horror genres to the mentorship program.

Kirsten Tranter is a novelist and critic with over twenty years experience in the world of publishing, and the author of the critically acclaimed novels The Legacy, Hold, and A Common Loss. Her approach to mentoring involves identifying and building on the storytelling strengths of a manuscript, with a focus on narrative structure and voice. Kirsten has taught creative writing at UC Berkeley, UTS, Writing NSW and literary festivals across Australia. Since the early 1990s Kirsten has worked as a freelance manuscript assessor and editor for organisations including leading agency Australian Literary Management. Kirsten brings expertise in a wide range of genres from literary fiction to genre fiction including sci-fi, fantasy, and romance.

Leonie Tyle has been dedicated to children’s literature as a librarian, reviewer, speaker, editor and publisher. She was Children’s & Young Adult Publisher at University of Queensland Press and established Woolshed Press, a children’s literary imprint for Random House Australia. Both lists have won many awards including the inaugural Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Young Adult Literature.

She is currently a Partner in Tyle&Bateson Publishing, a multi-faceted publishing services enterprise. Leonie does sessional teaching at Queensland University of Technology. She is the currently one of 3 judges for the Rosanne Fitzgibbon Editorial Award & a judge for the Dorothea Mackellar Poetry Award.

Leonie has worked with many of Australia’s finest authors and illustrators including Steven Herrick, James Moloney, Brian Caswell, James Roy, Gregory Rogers, David Mackintosh, Stella Danalis, Anthony Eaton, Bill Condon, Christine Bongers, Nette Hilton, Samuel Wagan Watson, Celeste Walters and Doris Pilkington Garimara. She has a passion for literature and believes in encouraging and providing an environment for her authors and illustrators to produce their most imaginative and creative work.

Lliane Clarke is an experienced publisher, writer, ghost-writer, editor and journalist with over 20 years of experience in publishing in print and online. She has a passion for story-telling and helping writers to bring to life the stories they want to tell.

Lliane has managed major authors across a variety of genres from biography, cookery and crime and has commissioned titles for markets in Australia and the UK. She has written and created trade and custom publishing titles for companies such as New Hobsons Press, New Holland Publishers International, Bauer Media Books, Emap Media Magazines and others. She runs non-fiction manuscript assessment sessions for Writing NSW and presents non-fiction titles on behalf of authors to publishers such as Hardie Grant, Allen and Unwin/Murdoch, Random House Penguin and New Holland Publishers amongst others. Lliane is also an experienced communications professional with extensive experience in developing publicity campaigns.

Maame Blue is the author of two novels; Bad Love, which won the 2021 Betty Trask award, and The Rest Of You, longlisted for the 2025 Jhalak Prose Prize. Her short stories have appeared in three anthologies, with another forthcoming in Be Gay, Do Crime in 2025. She has written for multiple publications including The Bookseller, Writers Mosaic and The Independent. She regularly mentors emerging writers working on their debut novels and nonfiction proposals, recently offering her services to Faber Academy UK and Kill Your Darlings in Australia. Maame has been a reader for multiple short story competitions including The Commonwealth Prize, The Brick Lane Short Story Prize and was a 2024 judge for the John Florio Prize. She regularly runs creative writing workshops and has taught for many places including Writing New South Wales, Writers Victoria, Kill Your Darlings and more. She splits her time between London and Melbourne.

Marcella Polain was born in Singapore, and migrated to Australia with her Armenian mother and Irish father. She lives and works on unceded Wadjuk Noongar land. Marcella has a background in theatre and screen. She has published four poetry collections and two novels, as well as short fiction and braided essays. Her work has won the Anne Elder Poetry Award, has twice won the Patricia Hackett Prize, and been shortlisted for the Judith Wright Poetry Prize, the WA Premier’s Poetry Prize and a Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. She has also been a recipient of an Australia Council grant. With visual artist Paul Uhlmann, Marcella co-founded fold editions, dedicated to the creation of hand-made books. She has been awarded the Gold Medal by the Writers Association of Armenia and has been published internationally and in translation.

Marcella has particular interest in trauma, migration, exile, genocide (including the Armenian Genocide), counter-narrative, resistance, hybridity, and liminality. She has taught Creative Writing for over 30 years at universities in Western Australia and now holds an Honorary position at Edith Cowan University. In that time, Marcella has worked with more than three dozen emerging writers – in the community and in postgraduate courses – supervising, mentoring, and helping to shape and edit manuscripts for publication. (Her work with postgraduate students was recognised with the Vice Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Research Supervision.) The writers she has worked with include: Kaya Ortiz, Brendan Ritchie, Holden Sheppard, Nandi Chinna, Shevaun Cooley, Elizabeth Lewis, Jennifer Kornberger, Karleah Olson, Jo Pollitt, and Christopher Konrad.

Mireille Juchau is a novelist, essayist and critic. Her third novel, The World Without Us, won the 2016 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award. Her essays, reviews and short fiction are widely published, most recently in The Monthly, newyorker.com, Tablet, Sydney Review of Books, Best Australian Essays and LA Review of Books. She has taught at several universities and in the community and has a PhD in literature. Mireille has also worked as an editor, at HEAT Magazine, RealTime and on several other publications.

Pamela Cook writes Rural Fiction novels (Hachette) featuring feisty women, tangled family relationships and a dash of romance. Her first novel, Blackwattle Lake, was published in 2012 after being selected for the Queensland Writer’s Centre/Hachette Manuscript Development Program. Her following novels were Essie’s Way (2013) and Close To Home (2015) and her fourth book, The Crossroads was released in December 2016. Her next book will be Contemporary Women’s Fiction. Pamela has taught writing workshops since 2005 and a number of her students have been published. She particularly enjoys working with new writers and helping them get to ‘The End’.

Seana Smith is a supportive and engaged writer of factual books and memoir. She has worked as a writer for more than 35 years and has had five books traditionally published by Pan Macmillan and Ventura Press. These are: Going Under, a memoir of family secrets, addiction and escape, 2024;  Sydney For Under Fives, 2001, 2005, 2008,; The Australian Autism Handbook, 2008, 2023; Beyond The Baby Blues, 2011, 2013; and Pocket Superfoods, 2014

Seana has also independently published two books and is experienced in supporting others to learn the art of self-publishing. She is co-host of the podcast The Publisher & The Writer which covers all aspects of writing and publishing.

Guiding authors through the creative writing process and through the publishing/sales/marketing process is something Stuart MacDonald has been doing for several decades. His broad experience of manuscript assessment, and of assisting, mentoring and motivating writers and students of creative writing, ranges from business books, self-help and autobiography to romance, serious fiction and poetry. Stuart’s background in publishing management includes directorships with a number of publishers including HarperCollins, Woodslane, Harlequin and Dorling Kindersley. He has spoken at numerous conferences here and overseas, and has lectured for a number of publishing organisations and educational institutions including the Australian Publishers Association and Macquarie University.

Timothy Daly is one of Australia’s most internationally produced playwrights, with a string of national and international productions to his credit. Actors such as Academy-Award winners Cate Blanchett and Geoffrey Rush have appeared in his plays. His 2008 play, Derrida In Love, was written expressly for the 2011 Academy Award nominee, Jacki Weaver. His play Kafka Dances has won over a dozen national and international awards since its première, and is the most internationally performed Australian plays of all time. His recent play The Man in the Attic was awarded Australia’s most prestigious award for a new play, the Patrick White Playwrights’ Award, and has just been performed in Paris. Timothy Daly’s newest play Richard III (ou presque) premiered at the 2010 Festival of Avignon, followed by a season in Paris in Oct-Nov, 2011.

He has been a literary judge in most categories for the Australian Writers’ Guild AWGIES, the NSW Premier’s Fellowship, and the Premier’s Literary Awards. He has taught extensively in Australia and overseas, and was a Featured Artist at the 2014 and 2016 Valdez Last Frontier Theatre Conference. His radio plays have been broadcast in six countries, and won an AWGIE and an AWGIE nomination. In 2012, Timothy Daly began a professional relationship with Los Angeles-based producer Victoria Wisdom for the production in the U.S.A. of his theatre and film work. He advises on over 100 plays and productions a year both in Australia and the US.