Pip Smith is a novelist, poet, songwriter and children’s author based in Sydney. Her critically acclaimed first novel, Half Wild, was published by Allen & Unwin in 2017, and her first collection of poetry, Too Close for Comfort, won the inaugural Helen Anne Bell Poetry Bequest Award in 2013. She reviews Australian literature for the Sydney Morning Herald and the Australian, and has two children’s picture books with Scholastic: Theodore the Unsure (2019) and To Greenland! (2022). She has judged the poetry and fiction categories for the Woollahra Digital Literary Award since its inauguration in 2017, judged the Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Novelist Award (2021), and has taught creative writing in high schools and universities. She thoroughly enjoys climbing inside works of literature in development and working out what makes them tick. pipsmith.net (@PipCSmith)

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. Personal website: www.tylebateson.com.au