Mohammad Awad is a Sydney based writer/artist/musician/poet. He is published in the anthology series Arab, Australian, Other and is one of the editors of the Admissions: Voices within Mental Health anthology. He worked as a peer worker in the mental health field, using poetry as a tool for expression. Mohammad will share his lived experience […]

Jess Scully is an author, curator and city-maker who uses creativity to inspire people to participate in shaping a sustainable and inclusive future. As Deputy Lord Mayor of Sydney from 2019 to 2022 and as a Councillor at the City of Sydney from 2016 to 2023, Jess advocated for new models to address the housing […]

Kate Larsen (she/her) is a writer, arts leader and former Director of Writers Victoria, currently based on Kaurna Yerta in Tarntanya/Adelaide. As a digital native and one of Australia’s best-known social media poets, she posted a daily #TinyLittlePoem for more than a decade. Her debut poetry collection, Public. Open. Space. was published by Fremantle Press […]

Amra Pajalić is an award-winning author, editor and teacher who draws on her Bosnian cultural heritage to write own voices stories for young people, who like her, are searching to mediate their identity and take pride in their diverse culture. Amra Pajalić won the 2009 Melbourne Prize for Literature’s Civic Choice Award for her debut […]

Rico Craig is an educator, writer, and award-winning poet whose work melds the narrative, lyrical and cinematic. Craig’s poetry has been awarded prizes or shortlisted for the Montreal Poetry Prize, Val Vallis Prize, Newcastle Poetry Prize, Dorothy Porter Poetry Prize and University of Canberra Poetry Prize. His poetry collection Bone Ink (University of Western Australia Publishing) was […]

Amani Haydar is an award-winning writer and visual artist. Her debut memoir The Mother Wound received the 2022 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Non-fiction, the ABIA Matt Richell Award for New Writer of the Year, and the Michael Crouch Award for Debut Work at the National Biography Awards. Amani is a former Archibald Prize finalist […]

Belinda Castles is the author of four novels and winner of the Australian/Vogel’s and Asher literary awards, as well as being named one of the Sydney Morning Herald’s Best Young Novelists. Her most recent novel, Bluebottle, was long-listed for the Stella Prize. She is the editor of the collection Reading like an Australian Writer and is working […]

Anna is a Melbourne writer whose latest book A Kind of Magic, a memoir about life with complex mental illness, was shortlisted in the Queensland Literary Awards. She is also the author of two novels, was the inaugural winner of the Horne Prize, and was the former Nonfiction Editor at Island.

Eliza Henry-Jones is an author and freelance writer. She has a PhD in creative writing, and has published five novels, which have been shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards, QLD Literary Awards and Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction. She has qualifications in psychology as well as grief, loss and trauma counselling, and has worked […]