J Ashley-Smith is a British–Australian author of dark fiction. His first book, The Attic Tragedy, won the Shirley Jackson Award. Other stories have won the Ditmar, Australian Shadows and Aurealis awards. He lives with his wife and two sons beneath an ominous mountain in the suburbs of North Canberra, gathering moth dust, tormented by the […]

Zachary Ashford is an educator, an occasional speaker, and the author of the Aurealis nominated post-apocalyptic novella When the Cicadas Stop Singing. His debut novel Polyphemus is out in July.

Joanne Anderton is an award-winning writer of science fiction, fantasy and horror, but also kids’ books and creative non-fiction. Her recent collections are Inanimates: Tales of Everyday Fear and The Art of Broken Things. She’s currently doing a PhD at UQ, where she’s attempting to use speculative fiction to write memoir and having far too […]

Sheila Ngọc Phạm is a writer, editor, producer and curator working across public health, media and the arts. She writes for a wide range of literary and mainstream publications, and was a finalist for the 2021 Pascall Prize for Arts Criticism. Sheila has held editorial roles at the ABC and co-produced Tongue Tied and Fluent (2019), a five-part series […]

Tara June Winch is a Wiradjuri writer based in Australia and France. Her first novel Swallow the Air (UQP, 2006) was critically acclaimed. In 2008, she was mentored by Nobel Prize winner Wole Soyinka as part of the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative. Her short-story collection After the Carnage (UQP) was published in 2016 […]

Lesley Hughes is Professor Emerita in Biology and Pro-Chancellor at Macquarie University. Her principal research interests have been the impacts of climate change on species and ecosystems and the implications for conservation. She is a former Lead Author for the IPCC’s 4th and 5th Assessment Report, a former federal Climate Commissioner, a member of the […]

Luke Patterson is a Gamilaroi poet, educator and musician living on Gadigal lands. His poetry has appeared in Cordite Poetry Review, Plumwood Mountain, Meanjin and The Suburban Review, as well as the anthologies Firefront: First Nations Poetry and Power Today, Nangamay Mana Djurali, and Best of Australian Poems 2025. His debut poetry collection, A Savage […]

Dan Findlay is the author of Year of the Orphan, a speculative fiction novel set in outback Australia. Dan is an historian by training, a writer by trade, and has over ten years’ experience editing Australia’s leading youth magazines. He also has over fifteen years experience as a writer and photographer for a variety of […]

Ivy Shih is a science writer, producer and illustrator. A former researcher, she now loves exploring the crossover between science and society. Her work has appeared in Nature, Cosmos and the ABC astronomy podcast Cosmic Vertigo and she was editor of the 2022 The Best Australian Science Writing Anthology.