Inga Simpson is an author whose third novel, Where the Trees Were, was published in 2016. She began her career as a professional writer for government before gaining a PhD in creative writing. After taking part in the Queensland Writer’s Centre Manuscript Development Program, Hachette published her first novel, the acclaimed Mr Wigg, in 2013, followed by Nest in 2014. She lives in the Sunshine Coast hinterland.

Larissa Behrendt is professor of Indigenous Research and Director of Research at the Jumbunna Indigenous House of Learning at the University of Technology, Sydney. She is a regular columnist for The Guardian and has published numerous textbooks on Indigenous legal issues. She is also the author of two novels:Home, which won the 2002 David Uniapon Award and the 2005 Commonwealth Writers’s Prize for Best First Book (South-East Asia and South Pacific); and Legacy, which won the 2010 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Indigenous Writing. She is the Ambassador of the Gawura Aboriginal Campus at St Andrew’s Cathedral School in Sydney and a board member of the Sydney Story Factory, a literacy program in Redfern. She was awarded the 2009 NAIDOC Person of the Year Award and 2011 NSW Australian of the Year. 

Meg Keneally started her working life as a junior public affairs officer at the Australian Consulate-General in New York, before moving to Dublin to work as a sub-editor and freelance features writer. On returning to Australia, she joined The Daily Telegraph as a general news reporter, covering everything from courts to crime to animals’ birthday parties at the zoo. She then joined Radio 2UE as a talkback radio producer. For more than ten years Meg has worked in corporate affairs for listed financial service companies, and doubles as a part-time SCUBA diving instructor.

Lucy Treloar was born in Malaysia and educated in Melbourne, England and Sweden. A graduate of the University of Melbourne and RMIT’s Professional Writing and Editing program, Lucy is a writer and editor and has plied her trades both in Australia and in Cambodia, where she lived for a number of years. She teaches creative writing at RMIT. Her novel Salt Creek was published in 2015 and has won or been shortlisted for awards including the Miles Franklin, the Dobbie, the ABIA Matt Richell Award,and the Indie Book Award for Best New Fiction. In 2014 she won the Commonwealth Short Story Prize (Pacific Region).

Anna Johnston is an ARC Future Fellow in the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at The University of Queensland, and Associate Professor in English Literature in the School of Communication and Arts.