Nicole Abadee

AUS

Nicole Abadee writes about books for Good Weekend, appears regularly at writers’ festivals and other literary events and has a books podcast, Books, Books, Books.

Randa Abdel-Fattah

AUS

Randa Abdel-Fattah is a Palestinian Egyptian Muslim multi-award-winning author of 14 books published in over 20 countries. Her most recent books include Coming of Age in the War on Terror (longlisted for the 2022 Stella Prize, shortlisted for the 2022 NSW and Victorian Premiers' Literary Awards), The Very Best Doughnut and her first picture story book, 11 Words for Love, illustrated by Maxine Beneba Clarke.

Susan Abulhawa

PSE/USA

Susan Abulhawa is Executive Director of the Palestine Writes Literature Festival, and the founder of Playgrounds for Palestine, an international children's NGO upholding the Right to Play for Palestinian children. Her debut novel, Mornings in Jenin, was translated into 30 languages and is considered a classic in Palestinian literature. Her most recent, Against the Loveless World, was lauded as a "masterpiece".

Podcasts on Spotify
Sovereignty and Solidarity

Natalie Ahmat

AUS

A proud Mudburra and Wagadagam woman, Natalie Ahmat is passionate about telling stories through an Indigenous lens. Natalie currently presents NITV News, Australia’s only dedicated Indigenous television news bulletin on National Indigenous Television, as well as the weekly Indigenous news program NITV News: Nula on SBS. Since joining the inaugural NITV News team in 2008, Natalie has travelled around the country reporting on First Nations issues, and has anchored the channel’s live coverage of some of the most significant Indigenous events in recent history, including Garma from north east Arnhem Land, the Uluru First Nations Constitutional Convention, and the National NAIDOC Awards.

Svetlana Alexievich

BEL

Svetlana Alexievich is a Nobel Laureate born in Ivano-Frakisvsk who lived most of her life in Belarus, with years in exile in Western Europe. She has been credited with the invention of a new literary genre, which she describes as a “novel of voices”; a documentary prose in which individuals record their own personal and political histories. In 2018, she was awarded the Anna Politkovskaya Award. Her books include The Unwomanly Face of War, Boys in Zinc and Voices from Chernobyl. 

Waleed Aly

AUS

Waleed Aly is a lecturer in politics at Monash University and co-host of Network Ten’s The Project. He is the author of People Like Us and Quarterly Essay 37, What’s Right? His latest written work, another Quarterly Essay co-authored with Scott Stephens, is Uncivil Wars. 

Simon Armitage

GBR

Simon Armitage is the British Poet Laureate as well as a broadcaster, playwright, novelist and the author of three best-selling volumes of non-fiction. He has published over 20 collections of poetry from his first, Zoom, in 1987 to his most recent, Magnetic Field: The Marsden Poems in 2020. After translating late 14th century poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight to front-page reviews across two continents, his translation of Pearl (another Medieval English poem thought to be of the same anonymous author responsible for Gawain) won the 2017 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation. Armitage writes and records with the band LYR and is Professor of Poetry at the University of Leeds.

Charlie Archbold

AUS

Charlie Archbold is an educator and writer. Her first novel, Mallee Boys, was a CBCA older readers honour book. The Sugarcane Kids and the Red-bottomed Boat, her first middle-grade novel, was shortlisted for the Text Prize. 

Neil Armfield

AUS

Neil Armfield’s work in theatre includes: I’m Not Running, National Theatre (NT); Cloudstreet Belvoir, NT and world tour; Diary of a Madman in Russia, Australia and NYC; Exit the King in Australia and on Broadway; The Book of Everything in Australia and NYC; The Judas Kiss in Australia, UK and US; The Secret River Australia tour, Edinburgh Festival and NT. In opera, Brett Dean’s Bliss and Hamlet at Glyndebourne and Adelaide Festival and various operas for companies including ENO, Royal Opera House, Chicago Lyric Opera, Zurich Opera, Bregenz Festival, Opera Australia, Canadian Opera, Welsh National Opera, Washington National Opera and Houston Grand Opera. Neil recently directed Rameau’s Platée for Pinchgut Opera. He directed the feature films Candy (2006) and Holding the Man (2015).

Dean Ashenden

AUS

Dean Ashenden has worked as an academic, a political adviser, and journalist. His book, Telling Tennant's Story won the 2022 inaugural Political Book of the Year.

Monica Attard

AUS

Monica Attard spent 28 years at the ABC, working across radio and television. She was the ABC’s Russia correspondent between 1989 and 1994 and again between 2003 and 2005. She is the author of Russia, Which Way Paradise? 

Shalom Auslander

USA

Shalom Auslander describes himself as having "been raised like a veal". He is the author of the short story collection Beware of God, the memoir Foreskin’s Lament and the novels Hope: A Tragedy and Mother For Dinner. He is the creator of Showtime’s Happyish. 

Sarah Ayoub

AUS

Sarah Ayoub is a journalist, bestselling author and academic with a PhD in migrant Australian YA literature. Her work has been published in The Guardian, The Sydney Morning Herald, Sydney Review of Books, Meanjin and more. She is a Stella Schools Program ambassador, contributed to anthology Arab, Australian, Other and was a judge for the NSW Premier's Literary Awards. She was elected to the board of the Australian Society of Authors in 2021 and is currently working on her first novel for adults. Her books include Hate is Such a Strong Word, The Yearbook Committee, The Cult of Romance and The Love That Grew. 

Alhierd Bacharevič

BLR

Alhierd Bacharevič (Альгерд Бахарэвіч) is a Belarusian writer. Born in 1975 in Minsk. Author of several books of fiction, essays and poetry. His novels and collections of essays have been translated into English, German, French, Polish and Russian. His magnum opus, the novel Dogs of Europe, is banned in Belarus. This novel was staged in London and Paris by the Belarusian Free Theater and in Poland by the Belarusian theater in exile, Kupalaucy. The novel Alindarka's Children was released in 2022 in the USA. He is author of the open Letter to Ukraine (2022) and of the essay Fascism as a memory (2020) translated into many languages. Together with his wife, poet Julia Cimafiejeva he took part in mass protests in Belarus in 2020. Now he lives in exile.

Tom Ballard

AUS

Tom Ballard is an award-winning comedian, broadcaster, philanthropist and virtue-signaller. He pretended to be cool on the Triple J breakfast show for years, then went on to perform stand-up all over the world and front his own naughty late-night show for #theirABC, Tonightly with Tom Ballard. (The program was cancelled because it was too funny). He’s also guest hosted Q&A for some reason, and since 2015 he’s sat down with everyone from Lyle Shelton to Yassmin Abdel-Magied for his political interview podcast Like I’m A Six-Year-Old. 

Tristan Bancks

AUS

Tristan Bancks tells stories for the page and screen. His books for kids and teens include Two Wolves, The Fall, Detention, the Tom Weekly series, and Nit Boy. Ginger Meggs, Tristan’s 100th anniversary book of short stories, is based on characters created by his great-great uncle, Jimmy Bancks. His books have won and been shortlisted for many awards, including a Children’s Book Council of Australia Honour Book, the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards, ABIA, YABBA, KOALA, NSW Premier’s Literary Awards and Queensland Literary Awards. His latest book is Cop & Robber.

John Banville

IRL

John Banville was a journalist for 30 years and literary editor of The Irish Times for over a decade. He has written over 20 award-winning novels and 10 under the pseudonym Benjamin Black. His new novel is The Singularities.

Paul Barclay

AUS

Paul Barclay is a Walkley Award-winning journalist and broadcaster. He is currently the presenter and producer of Big Ideas on ABC Radio National. 

Ramzy Baroud

USA/PSE

Dr Ramzy Baroud is the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of six books including My Father Was A Freedom Fighter and The Last Earth. His latest book, co-edited with Ilan Pappé, is Our Vision for Liberation: Engaged Palestinian Leaders & Intellectuals Speak Out.

Jumana Bayeh

AUS

Jumana Bayeh’s research focuses on Arab diaspora literature from the early twentieth century to the present. Her latest book is The Literature of the Lebanese Diaspora. 

Allan Behm

AUS

Allan Behm is the Director of the Australia Institute’s International and Security Affairs Program and has long experience in the Australian Public Service, international policy, national security policy and defence policy. He was the inaugural chair of Canberra Writers Festival and is a board member of FearLess, a not-for-profit that addresses the needs of those many Australians who live with PTSD. His books include No, Minister and No Enemies, No Friends, which was shortlisted for Australian Political Book of the Year. 

Mike Bowers

AUS

Mike Bowers is a photographer, a regular commentator on ABC Radio, and host of Talking Pictures on ABC's  Insiders. He has spent 30 years in the Federal Parliamentary Press Gallery and has published four books, including Gallipoli Untold Stories, The Big Picture: 175 Years of The Sydney Morning Herald and A Century of Pictures: 100 Years of Herald Photography. His fourth book, Armageddon: Two Men on an ANZAC Trail, was a joint venture with journalist Paul Daley.  

John Boyne

IRL

John Boyne is the author of 14 novels for adults, six for younger readers and a collection of short stories. Perhaps best known for his 2006 multi-award-winning book The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas, John’s other novels, notably The Absolutist and A History of Loneliness, have been widely praised and are international bestsellers. His latest novel is All The Broken Places. 

Podcasts on Spotify
History Lessons

Steve Bracks

AUS

The Hon Steve Bracks AC was Premier of Victoria for eight years. He is Chancellor of Victoria University, chairs Maurice Blackburn Lawyers, the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) Trust, The Shannon Company, and the AFL Strategic Community Investment Fund Advisory Board. He chaired the Cbus Superannuation Fund from 2009 to 2021. He was an honorary adviser to the former Prime Minister of Timor-Leste, Xanana Gusmao from 2007 to 2017.  

Michael Bradley

AUS

Michael Bradley is a lawyer, writer, managing partner of Marque Lawyers (a commercial firm with a strong human rights interest) and a regular columnist for Crikey. His first book, Coniston, detailed the last massacre of Aboriginal people, and his second, System Failure, explores how our current justice system fails survivors of sexual assault. His latest book Freeing My Family is co-authored with Sadam Abdusalam.

George Brandis

AUS

George Brandis was a Senator for Queensland from 2000 to 2018, Minister for the Arts in the Howard and Abbott Governments, Attorney-General in the Abbott and Turnbull Governments, and Leader of the Government in the Senate under Prime Minister Turnbull.  He was Australia’s High Commissioner to the United Kingdom from 2018 to 2022. He was recently appointed as a Professor at the National Security College at the Australian National University. He also writes a regular column for the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.

Bernadette Brennan

AUS

Bernadette Brennan is the award-winning biographer of Brian Castro and Helen Garner. Her most recent book, Leaping Into Waterfalls: The Enigmatic Gillian Mears was shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Douglas Stewart award and won the prestigious Magarey Medal for Biography, the National Biography Award and The Age Book of the Year (non-fiction). Bernadette is also one of five judges for the Miles Franklin Award.

William "Bill" Browder

USA

Bill Browder, founder and CEO of Hermitage Capital Management, was the largest foreign investor in Russia until 2005, when he was denied entry to the country after exposing widespread corruption. Since 2009, when his lawyer Sergei Magnitsky was murdered in Russian police custody, he has been leading a global campaign to expose the human rights abuses endemic in Russia. The ‘Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act’ was signed into US law in 2012, imposing visa bans and asset freezes on certain officials involved in Magnitsky’s death. His latest book is Freezing Orders.

Peter Brune

AUS

Peter Brune is one of Australia's leading military historians. He is author of the bestselling and highly acclaimed A Bastard of a Place: the Australians in Papua, as well as Those Ragged Bloody Heroes: from the Kokoda Trail to Gona Beach 1942, The Spell Broken: exploding the myth of Japanese invincibility and We Band of Brothers: a biography of Ralph Honner, soldier and statesman and is co-author with Neil McDonald of 200 Shots: Damien Parer and George Silk and the Australians at War in New Guinea. He lives in Adelaide.

Podcasts on Spotify
The Battle for Long Tan

Richard Buckham

AUS

Richard Buckham worked for many years at the ABC, starting as a radio producer in the early 1980s. He spent a year in London with the BBC in 1989. After working in theatre and opera in the 90s, he returned to the ABC where he was arts editor at Radio National, manager of ABC Classic for nine years, and head of Arts until 2020.

Shannon Burns

AUS

Shannon Burns is a writer, critic and academic from Adelaide. His memoir Childhood has just been published.

Podcasts on Spotify
Thinking Writing Now

Paul Byrnes

AUS

Paul Byrnes is a film critic for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. He was director of the Sydney Film Festival for 10 years, until 1998. His bestseller, The Lost Boys, about underage ANZACs in the First World War, won the Indie Award for Best Illustrated Book. Sons of War is his second book. 

Bob Carr

AUS

The Hon Bob Carr holds the record for longest continuously serving Premier in the history of New South Wales and he also served as Australia’s Foreign Minister for 18 months. Since leaving politics, Carr has led a distinguished career as a defacto diplomat, author and academic. He is the author of My Reading Life, Thoughtlines, Diary of a Foreign Minister and political memoir Run for Your Life. 

Podcasts on Spotify
Cold War, Hot Culture

John Carty

AUS

Professor John Carty is Director of the National Centre for Aboriginal Languages and Music at the University of Adelaide, and is also currently serving on the National Commission for UNESCO. He has worked extensively with Aboriginal custodians on art, heritage and museum projects. Some of his books include Balgo: Creating Country, Indigenous Australia: Enduring Civilisation,Desert Lake: art, science and stories from Paruku and Ngaanyatjarra: art of the Lands. His next book will be released in 2023.  

Jo Case

AUS

Jo Case is Editor, Books & Ideas at The Conversation. She has been associate publisher at Wakefield Press, deputy editor of Australian Book Review, books editor of The Big Issue and associate editor of Kill Your Darlings. A former program manager of Melbourne Writers Festival, Jo was a co-founder of the Feminist Writers Festival and a founding board member of the Stella Prize. Her first book, Boomer and Me: A memoir of motherhood, and Asperger’s, was shortlisted for the inaugural Russell Prize for Humour Writing. Her reviews have been published in The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald, the Australian, Australian Book Review and The Monthly. She writes a regular books column and reviews for InReview. 

Podcasts on Spotify
Unbelonging

Amit Chaudhuri

IND

Amit Chaudhuri is the author of 8 novels, the latest of which is Sojourn. His most recent nonfiction book, Finding the Raga, explores North Indian classical music. He is also an essayist, poet, short story writer, singer and composer.

Julia Cimafiejeva

BLR

Julia Cimafiejeva (Юля Цімафеева) is a Belarusian writer and translator living in exile. She is the author of four poetry collections in Belarusian and a documentary book Minsk Diary. Her new book is Motherfield: Poems & Belarusian Protest Diary.

Heather Clark

GBR

Heather Clark wrote the definitive biography Red Comet: The Short life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath. It was shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize, was a finalist in the National Book Critics Circle Award, LA Times Book prize in biography and one of The New York Times Top Ten Books of 2022.

J.M. Coetzee

ZAF/AUS

J.M. Coetzee was the first author to win the Booker Prize twice and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2003. His work includes Waiting for the Barbarians, Life & Times of Michael K, The Master of Petersburg, Disgrace, Diary of a Bad Yea, Elizabeth Costello: Eight Lessons and trilogy of novels: The Childhood of Jesus, The Schooldays of Jesus and The Death of Jesus.

Josh Cohen

GBR

Josh Cohen teaches Modern Literary Theory at Goldsmiths and is a psychoanalyst. He is the author of books and articles on modern literature, cultural theory and psychoanalysis, including Why We Remain in the Dark, Not Working, How to Love and What To Do. His latest book is Losers.

Joshua Cohen

USA

Joshua Cohen won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for fiction for his latest novel The Netanyahus: An Account of a Minor and Ultimately Even Negligible Episode in the History of a Very Famous Family. His books include the novels Moving Kings, Book of Numbers, Witz, A Heaven of Others, and Cadenza for the Schneidermann Violin Concerto. He also wrote the short-fiction collection Four New Messages and essay collection Attention: Dispatches from a Land of Distraction.

Inala Cooper

AUS

Inala Cooper is a Yawuru woman and the Director of Murrup Barak Centre at the University of Melbourne. Her book Marrul: Aboriginal Identity and the Fight for Rights was published in 2022.

Podcasts on Spotify
Holding White Australia to Account

Miriam Cosic

AUS

Sloane Crosley

USA

Sloane Crosley is the author of the bestselling essay collections I Was Told There’d Be Cake and How Did You Get This Number, as well as Look Alive Out There and the bestselling novel The Clasp. She was the inaugural columnist for the New York Times op-ed "Townies" series, a contributing editor at Interview Magazine and Vanity Fair and a columnist for the Village Voice and New York Observer. She also created sadstuffonthestreet.com. Her latest novel is Cult Classic.

James Curran

AUS

James Curran is Professor of Modern History at Sydney University. A former analyst with the Office of National Assessments, he has authored a number of books, including The Power of Speech, Unholy Fury: Whitlam and Nixon at War and David Campese: The Last of the Dream Sellers.  

Paul Daley

AUS

Paul Daley is a Sydney-based author, essayist and multi-award-winning journalist who writes about history, Australian national identity and Indigenous culture in his column ‘Postcolonial’ for The Guardian. He is the author of On Patriotism, the political thriller Challenge, and his latest novel Jesustown.

Terence Davies

GBR

Terence Davies is a screenwriter, film director and novelist, and has been described by The Evening Standard as “Britain’s greatest living film director”. Many of his films are meditations on the literary life: Virginia Woolf, Emily Dickinson, Edith Wharton and Terrence Rattigan. His latest film, Benediction, is about the English war poet, Siegfried Sassoon.

Glyn Davis

AUS

Professor Glyn Davis AC is Secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet. He is a political scientist who served as Vice-Chancellor at the University of Melbourne. His books include The Australian Idea of a University, The Republic of Learning and On Life's Lottery. 

Megan Davis

AUS

Megan Davis is the Balnaves Chair in Constitutional Law, Director of the Indigenous Law Centre at UNSW Law and Pro Vice Chancellor at UNSW. She is the leading constitutional lawyer on Indigenous constitutional recognition and was a member of the Prime Minister’s Referendum Council and the Prime Minister’s Expert Panel on Constitutional Recognition. She is a Cobble Cobble woman from south-west Queensland. Her new book, co-authored with George Williams, is Everything You Need to Know About the Uluru Statement from The Heart. 

Brigid Delaney

AUS

Brigid Delaney is a speechwriter for Labor Minister Katy Gallagher. She was previously a journalist for The Guardian and wrote a popular weekly column, "Brigid Delaney’s Diary", that was widely read in Australia, the US and the UK. She was the co-founder of the Mercy Campaign, an anti-death penalty movement, and co-created the Netflix TV comedy Wellmania. She is the author of four books: This Restless Life, Wild Things, Wellmania and Reasons Not to Worry.

Podcasts on Spotify
Start Worrying, Details to Follow

Richard Denniss

AUS

Richard Denniss is the Executive Director of the Australia Institute, He is the author of several books including: Econobabble, Curing Affluenza, Dead Right: How Neoliberalism Ate Itself and What Comes Next? and Big: The Role of the State in the Modern Economy.

Tim Dunlop

AUS

Tim Dunlop is a Melbourne-based writer. His four books are an ongoing argument with the status quo, taking on the tired ideas of the political class and offering a better way forward. His new book, Voices Of Us, examines the 2022 election and the emergence of independents as a new political force.

Geoff Dyer

USA

Geoff Dyer is the award-winning author of Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi, three previous novels and fourteen nonfiction books. His work has been translated into 24 languages. He is the Writer-in-Residence at the University of Southern California. Hi latest book is The Last Days of Roger Federer.

Mohammed El-Kurd

PSE

Mohammed El-Kurd is an award-winning writer from Jerusalem, Palestine. His work has been featured in numerous international outlets and he is currently the Palestine Correspondent for The Nation. RIFQA, his debut collection of poetry, was published in October 2021. Alongside his twin sister Muna, he was named as one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time Magazine in 2021.

Gareth Evans

AUS

Gareth Evans, now Chancellor of the Australian National University, was a member of the Australian Parliament for 21 years, and a cabinet minister throughout the Hawke–Keating era, serving as Foreign Minister from 1988-96. He led the Brussels-based International Crisis Group from 2000-09 and has won many prizes and awards for his contributions to international policymaking. He has written or edited, solely or jointly, twelve books, most recently Good International Citizenship: The Case for Decency. 

Jon Faine

AUS

Jon Faine is an award-winning journalist who, until October 2019, hosted the morning broadcast for ABC Radio in Melbourne for more than twenty years. He regularly contributes to major newspapers with opinion pieces and has been nominated for three Walkley awards. Apollo & Thelma: A True Tall Tale is his second book.

Lara Feigel

GBR

Lara Feigel is the author of one novel, The Group, and four previous works of non-fiction: Literature, Cinema and Politics 1930-1945, The Love-charm of Bombs, The Bitter Taste of Victory and Free Woman. Her latest book, Look! We Have Come Through!, is also a work of non-fiction.

Adele Ferguson

AUS

Adele Ferguson is an acclaimed investigative journalist, working for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. She is a regular guest reporter for the ABC's Four Corners and 7.30 programs, and Nine’s 60 Minutes. She is the author of a bestselling unauthorised biography of Gina Rinehart and the award-winning Banking Bad: Whistleblowers. Corporate cover-ups. One journalist's fight for the truth.Ferguson has won a multitude of awards, including the Gold Walkley, nine Walkley awards, a Logie, the Graham Perkin Journalist of the Year, and 20 Quill Awards, including two Gold Quills. 

Isi Ferguson

AUS

Isi Ferguson was born and raised in the creative climate of the Bellinger Valley. Her attention is drawn by colour, culture and quirky moments.

Sarah Ferguson

AUS

Sarah Ferguson is the presenter of the ABC’s 7.30. She has won four Walkleys, including the Gold Walkley in 2011, the Melbourne Press Club Gold Quill Award, four Logies for most outstanding public affairs report, the George Munster Award for Independent Journalism and the Queensland Premier's Literary Award. She is the author of The Killing Season and On Mother. 

Richard Fidler

AUS

Richard Fidler is a presenter of Conversations on ABC Radio National, which attracts a large listening audience around the nation and is the most popular podcast in Australia. Richard is also the author of several bestselling books: Ghost Empire, Saga Land (co-authored with his friend Kári Gíslason) and The Golden Maze. His latest book is The Book of Roads and Kingdoms.

Sheila Fitzpatrick

AUS

Sheila Fitzpatrick is a historian of modern Russia. Her recent books include On Stalin’s Team: The Years of Living Dangerously in Soviet Politics, Mischka’s War, White Russians, A Spy in the Archives and My Father's Daughter. Her latest book is The Shortest History of the Soviet Union.  

Peter FitzSimons

AUS

Peter FitzSimons AM is a journalist and columnist with The Sydney Morning Herald and The Sun Herald and the bestselling author of many books, including Breaker Morant, Burke and Wills, Monash's Masterpiece, Kokoda, Ned Kelly and Gallipoli, as well as biographies of such notable Australians as Sir Douglas Mawson, Nancy Wake and Nick Farr-Jones. His most recent book is The Battle of Long Tan.

Podcasts on Spotify
The Battle for Long Tan

Patrick Flanery

AUS

Patrick Flanery is the author of four novels, including Absolution, which was shortlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary award, and a memoir, The Ginger Child. He is Chair of Creative Writing at the University of Adelaide.

Podcasts on Spotify
Thinking Writing Now

Mem Fox

AUS

Mem Fox's first book, Possum Magic, still available in hardback after 39 years, has become a beacon of children’s literature for millions of Australian families. She has written over 40 children’s books, many of which have been bestsellers in Australia and the USA, including Time for Bed and Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes.   

Nicci French

GBR

Nicci French is the pseudonym for the writing partnership of journalists Nicci Gerrard and Sean French. The couple are married and live in London and Suffolk.

Please see the separate listings for Nicci Gerrard and Sean French in the lineup to find out more about the sessions they will be part of individually.

Sean French

GBR

Sean French is one half of writing duo Nicci French. Outside this writing partnership, he has written other novels, biographies of Patrick Hamilton and Brigitte Bardot, and a study for the British Film Institute on James Cameron’s The Terminator. 

Esther Freud

GBR

Esther Freud trained as an actress before writing her first novel, Hideous Kinky, which was shortlisted for the John Llewellyn Rhys prize and made into a film starring Kate Winslet. After publishing her second novel, Peerless Flats, she was chosen as one of Granta’s Best Young British novelists. I Couldn’t Love You More is her ninth novel.

Ross Garnaut

AUS

Ross Garnaut produced the Garnaut Climate Change Review for the Australian government in 2008. He is the author of many books, including the bestselling Dog Days, Superpower and Reset. 

Podcasts on Spotify
The Planet's Clock is Ticking

Joëlle Gergis

AUS

Dr Joëlle Gergis is an award-winning climate scientist and writer. She is an internationally recognised expert in Australian and Southern Hemisphere climate variability, has authored over 100 scientific publications and is a lead author on the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Sixth Assessment Report. Her books include Sunburnt Country and Humanity's Moment. 

Nicci Gerrard

GBR

Nicci Gerrard is a novelist, a journalist and a campaigner who has co-written many books under the pseudonym Nicci French. In her own name, she has written five novels and a groundbreaking book which explores the many meanings of dementia, What Dementia Teaches Us About Love about the rights of those who live with dementia. She co-founded John’s Campaign, which has changed the culture of care in hospitals and residential homes across the UK.

Max Gillies

AUS

Max Gillies is a political satirist and Simon Armitage aficionado. His eight stage revues toured nationally, beginning with Squirts at the Dunstan Playhouse in 1981 and finally with Once Were Leaders which played at the same venue in 2017. The Gillies Report appeared on ABC TV. 

Kerryn Goldsworthy

AUS

Kerryn Goldsworthy is an Adelaide writer and critic who has worked as a university lecturer, magazine editor and newspaper columnist. She has won two national prizes for writing: the 2013 Pascall Prize for arts criticism and the 2017 Horne Prize for her essay "The Limit of the World". She is the author of Adelaide.  

Peter Goldsworthy

AUS

Peter Goldsworthy divides his working time between medicine and writing. His novels have sold over 400,000 copies in Australia alone, and his writing has been shortlisted and won major literary awards across a range of genres: poetry, short story, novels, theatre, and opera libretti. His most recent book is Minotaur.

Jonathan Green

AUS

Jonathan Green has been an editor, writer, commentator and broadcaster in a 40-year career. He left The Age in 2006 to edit Crikey. After three years there, he moved to the ABC as founding editor of ABC Online’s The Drum. He was editor of Meanjin from 2015 to 2022. He now presents Blueprint for Living on ABC Radio National and the ABC podcast Return Ticket. He is the author of Around Australia In 80 Days and The Year My Politics Broke. 

Podcasts on Spotify
Life is a Brief Affair
History Lessons

Dominic Guerrera

AUS

Dominic Guerrera is a Ngarrindjeri, Kaurna and Italian person. He is a poet, podcaster and writer, and his work has been published in Artlink Magazine, Granta Magazine, Cordite Review  and IndigenousX. Dominic created and co-hosted The ASH Podcast from 2018-2020, with live shows at Melbourne Writers Festival and Adelaide’s Feast Festival. As a curator, Dominic has produced two exhibitions for Nexus Arts – Circles to Us in 2020 and Staunch in 2022, the latter of which also featured in the Art Gallery of South Australia’s Tarnanthi Festival. In 2021 Dominic was the guest curator for the Context Writers Festival. In 2021 Dominic was awarded the Ooodgerro Noonuccal Poetry Prize.

Anna Gahan

AUS

Anna McGahan is a poet, essayist, scriptwriter, author and actor. Her poetry and essays have been published in The Griffith Review, The Guardian and more. Her previous work includes the memoir Metanoia and Skin, a collection of poetry for pregnancy and birth. She has won the Queensland Young Playwright’s Award twice, been shortlisted for the Queensland Premier’s Drama Award, and shortlisted for The Saturday Paper’s Horne Prize. She was the 2022 runner-up of the Australian Poetry Slam National Final. She is currently in the publication process for her first fiction novel. 

Gillian Hagenus

AUS

Gillian Hagenus is a part-time editor at MidnightSun Publishing and an MPhil candidate in Creative Writing at the University of Adelaide, where she is focussing on Australian Suburban Gothic fiction. Her short fiction was longlisted for the Peter Carey Short Story Award in 2022.

Podcasts on Spotify
Thinking Writing Now

Chris Hammer

AUS

Chris Hammer was a journalist for more than 30 years. His first novel, Scrublands, was an instant bestseller in 2018, winning the prestigious UK Crime Writers Association John Creasy Award for a debut crime novel and shortlisted for various awards in Australia and the United States. He has continued to write one book a year, and is now on his fifth novel, The Tilt. 

Sarah Hanson-Young

AUS

Senator Sarah Hanson-Young has spent 15 years in Parliament and has become one of the country's leading voices on women in politics, environment and nature protection, media policy and human rights. Her short book En Garde was a personal expose that helped break the silence on women’s treatment in modern Australian politics. Sarah is the Australian Greens spokesperson for the Environment, Media, Communications and the Arts. 

David Hare

GBR

Sir David Hare was described by the Washington Post as “the premiere political dramatist writing in English.” He has written over thirty stage plays and thirty screenplays for film and television. The plays include Plenty, Pravda (with Howard Brenton), The Secret Rapture, Racing Demon, Skylight, Amy’s View, The Blue Room, Via Dolorosa, Stuff Happens, The Absence of War, The Judas Kiss and Straight Line Crazy. His film credits include The Hours, The Reader, Damage, Denial, Wetherby and The White Crow among others, while his television films include Licking Hitler, The Worricker Trilogy, Collateral and Roadkill. In a millennial poll of the greatest plays of the 20th century, five of the top 100 were his.

Natalie Harkin

AUS

Natalie Harkin is a Narungga woman living on Kaurna Yarta. She is a poet and research fellow at Flinders University with an interest in decolonising state archives, currently engaging archival-poetic methods to research and document Aboriginal women's domestic service and labour histories in SA. Her books include Dirty Words and Archival-poetics. 

Jane Harper

AUS

Jane Harper is the author of international bestsellers The Dry, Force of Nature, The Lost Man and The Survivors. Awards include the CWA Gold Dagger for Best Crime Novel, the British Book Awards Crime and Thriller Book of the Year, the Australian Book Industry Awards Book of the Year and the Australian Indie Awards Book of the Year.

Podcasts on Spotify
The Aussie Queen of Noir

Melinda Harvey

AUS

Melinda Harvey is a book critic who has written for a wide variety of newspapers and magazines since 2004. She has been a Walkley Awards finalist for her criticism and has served as on the judging panels of the Miles Franklin Literary Award (2017-2021) and Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize (2021-2022). She co-coordinates the Stella Count, which assesses the extent of gender bias in Australia’s book pages annually. 

Polly Hemming

AUS

Polly Hemming is a senior researcher in the Australia Institute’s Climate & Energy Program. Her current work focuses on carbon markets, climate integrity and greenwash. In a former life, she led an eco-label green-washing climate action by the private sector.  

Jill Hennessy

AUS

The Hon Jill Hennessy is a former Minister for Health and Attorney-General. A well known reformer, she led the groundbreaking reforms to legalise assisted dying in Victoria. She is the author of Respect and recipient of the Thornett Award for the Promotion of Reason. 

Sally Hepworth

AUS

Sally Hepworth is the New York Times bestselling author of seven novels, including The Good Sister and The Younger Wife. Her latest novel is The Soulmate.

Podcasts on Spotify
My Editor and Me

Samantha Rose Hill

GBR

Samantha Rose Hill is the author of two books: Hannah Arendt and Hannah Arendt’s Poems (to be released 2023). She regularly contributes to publications including Los Angeles Review of Books, Contemporary Political Theory and The South Atlantic Quarterly. She is currently writing a book on loneliness.

Sarah Holland-Batt

AUS

Sarah Holland-Batt is an award-winning poet, editor and critic, and a Professor of Creative Writing at QUT. She is the author of three poetry collections: Aria, the recipient of several national literary awards, The Hazards, winner of the 2016 Prime Minister’s Literary Award, and The Jaguar. She is also the author of Fishing for Lightning, a collection of her columns about reading poetry. 

Simon Holmes à Court

AUS

Simon Holmes à Court is a senior advisor to the Climate and Energy College at Melbourne University. Simon is also a cleantech investor, climate philanthropist and a director of the Smart Energy Council and the Australian Environmental Grant-makers Network. His first book, The Big Teal, was published in 2022.

Podcasts on Spotify
The Planet's Clock is Ticking

Chloe Hooper

AUS

Chloe Hooper is the multi-award-winning author of two novels: A Child's Book of True Crime and The Engagement. Her nonfiction books include The Tall Man and The Arsonist: A Mind on Fire. Her latest book is Bedtime Story. 

Hasib Hourani

AUS

Hasib Hourani is a Lebanese-Palestinian writer, editor, arts worker and educator living on unceded Wurundjeri Country. Hourani is a 2020 recipient of The Wheeler Centre’s Next Chapter Scheme and is currently working on a book of poetry about suffocation and the occupation of Palestine.

Defne Huzmeli

AUS

DEFNE is a queer multidisciplinary artist. She currently studies a Bachelor of Arts (Creative Writing & Theatre) & Fine Arts (Photography & Graphic Design) at UNSW. DEFNE is the Program Coordinator for Word Travels and runs West Side Poetry Slam in Western Sydney. 

Marina Hyde

GBR

Marina Hyde has worked at The Guardian since 2000, where her three weekly columns - on sport, celebrity and politics - have won her a reputation as one of the most "lethally funny" and admired journalists in the UK. Her latest book is What Just Happened: Dispatches from Turbulent Times.

Sumeyya Ilanbey

AUS

Sumeyya Ilanbey is a state political reporter for The Age and has won Walkley and Quill Awards for her journalism. Her first book, a political biography of Daniel Andrews, was published in 2022. 

Greg Jericho

AUS

Dr Greg Jericho is the Policy Director, Labour Market and Fiscal at the Centre for Future Work. Greg also writes a weekly column on economics and politics for The Guardian Australia, a position he has held since 2013.  

Gail Jones

AUS

Gail Jones is one of Australia’s most celebrated writers. She is the author of two short story collections and nine novels, and her work has been translated into several languages. She has received numerous literary awards, including the Prime Minister’s Literary Award, The Age Book of the Year, the South Australian Premier’s Award, the ALS Gold Medal and the Kibble Award, and has been shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award, the International Dublin Literary Award and the Prix Femina Étranger. Her latest novel is Salonika Burning.

Jill Jones

AUS

Jill Jones is a poet living on unceded Kaurna land. Her latest book is Wild Curious Air, winner of the 2021 Wesley Michel Wright Prize. In 2015, she won the Victorian Premier’s Prize for Poetry for The Beautiful Anxiety. Her work is widely published in Australia, Canada, Ireland, NZ, Singapore, Sweden, UK, and the USA, and has been translated into a number of languages. 

Tony Jones

AUS

Tony Jones is one of Australia’s most renowned journalists. He has reported for Four Corners and presented Lateline, winning Walkleys for both, and was the host of Lateline for over a decade and Q&A for 12 years. He has published two acclaimed thrillers: The Twentieth Man and In Darkness Visible.

Mireille Juchau

AUS

Mireille Juchau is a novelist and Walkley Award-winning critic. Her novel The World Without Us won the 2016 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award. Her essays and reviews are widely published, most recently in the LA Review of Books, The Monthly and newyorker.com. 

Michaela Kalowski

AUS

Michaela Kalowski is an interviewer, moderator and curator for writers’ and ideas festivals. Highlight interviews include Margaret Atwood, David Mitchell, Michelle de Kretser, Amos Oz, Stan Grant, Holly Ringland and Etgar Keret. She's the curator of ABC Radio National’s on-air writers’ festival, Big Weekend of Books, now in its fourth year. In 2022, she was curator of international author events for Brisbane Writers Festival.  

Sarah Kanowski

AUS

Sarah Kanowski co-presents Conversations on ABC Radio and podcast. She previously presented Books and Arts on ABC Radio National and joined the ABC as a producer on Late Night Live. 

Sayed Kashua

PSE

Sayed Kashua is a Palestinian author, born in Israel and now living in exile. He is the author of the novels Dancing Arabs, Let It Be Morning, which was shortlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and Second Person Singular, winner of the prestigious Bernstein Prize. Kashua wrote a weekly column for Haaretz for many years and is the creator of the prize-winning sitcoms Arab Labor and The Writer.

Podcasts on Spotify
The Survivor's Humour

Mariana Katzarova

BGR

Mariana Katzarova is the founder of RAW in WAR (Reach All Women In War). Mariana has over 25 years’ experience of working with human rights issues in conflict zones such as Bosnia, Kosovo, Chechnya and Ukraine; working in a variety of International organisations such as the OECD and the United Nations. She worked for 10 years as the researcher on Russia and Chechnya at Amnesty International in London.

Bernard Keane

AUS

Bernard Keane has been Crikey's correspondent in Canberra since 2008, writing on politics, media and economics. He is the author of the e-book War On The Internet and co-author of the bestseller A Short History of Stupid, with Helen Razer. He is also the author of the novel Surveillance.

John Keane

AUS

Born in South Australia, John Keane is Professor of Politics at the University of Sydney and the WZB (Berlin). He is renowned globally for his creative thinking about politics, history, media and democracy, and is the author of many books including Tom Paine: A Political Life, The Life and Death of Democracy, Power and Humility and The New Despotism. He has contributed to the New York Times, Al Jazeera, the Times Literary Supplement, Financial Times, The Guardian, Die Zeit, Hindustan Times and the South China Morning Post. The ABC speaks of him as "one of Australia’s great intellectual exports". He was nominated for the 2021 Balzan Prize (Italy) and the Holberg Prize (Norway) for outstanding global contributions to the human sciences. His latest book is The Shortest History of Democracy, which is forthcoming in a dozen languages.  

Louise Kennedy

IRL

Louise Kennedy is the author of award-winning short story collection The End of the World is a Cul de Sac. Her first novel, Trespasses, won the 2022 An Post Irish Book Award for Novel of the Year. Before starting her writing career, she spent nearly 30 years working as a chef.

Colin Kinchela

AUS

Colin Kinchela is a Gomeroi Muri, born and raised on Country in the north-west what is known as the state of NSW. He is an independently based and trained Artist, and qualified educator with over two decades of creative practice, engagement and experience working works across a sweep of performance mechanisms.

He has performed with theatre companies, Belvoir St, Ilbijerri Theatre Company, Malthouse Theatre, Performance Space and Moogahlin Performing Arts Inc. A founding member of the interdisciplinary theatre and online artist association, Cope ST Collective; and Sean Jorvn.

Working in the independent arts sector with the long-term core and impassioned interests of how First Nations stories are created and presented Colin dedicates his time to educating others on the principles of Transformational Ethical Storytelling at Our Race. His integral role in the development of the Transformational Ethical Storytelling framework, which has included collaboration with Story Holders, advocacy groups and law firms Terri Janke and Company and Marque Lawyers.

‘Gugurrgaagaa ’93 Where a heart like mine belongs' is his first published poem through Black Books part of Nangamay Mana Djurali (dream, gather, grow) First Nations Anthology. Colin is currently is a Company Director at Our Race, and works in Policy and Partnerships at Create NSW.

Laura Kipnis

USA

Laura Kipnis is the author of seven books, including Unwanted Advances: Sexual Paranoia Comes to Campus. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Harper’s, Slate, and Bookforum, among others. Her latest book is Love in the Time of Contagion: A Diagnosis.

Alan Kohler

AUS

Alan Kohler has been a financial journalist and editor for 46 years. He previously served as editor of The Age and has worked for the ABC for the past 21 years, first as business editor of The 7.30 Report and then as host of Inside Business and as finance presenter on ABC News. He was the founder of Eureka Report and Business Spectator, now owned by News Corporation, and recently started a new publication, The Constant Investor. 

Jack Latimore

AUS

Jack Latimore is a Birpai-Thungutti man, a journalist and a writer. He currently works as the Aboriginal affairs journalist for The Age. 

Chip Le Grand

AUS

Chip Le Grand is the chief reporter for The Age. Lockdown, the story of Melbourne's pandemic experience, is his second book. His previous book, The Straight Dope, an investigation into the Essendon and Cronulla football doping scandals, was awarded the Walkley Book Award and William Hill Australian Sports Book of the Year.  

Tyberius Larking

AUS

Tyberius Larking is an Indigenous writer and visual artist of trans experience based on Kaurna land.

Jeanine Leane

AUS

Jeanine Leane is a Wiradjuri writer, poet and academic from southwest New South Wales. Her poetry, short stories, critique, and essays have been published in Hecate: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Women’s Liberation Australian Poetry Journal, Antipodes, Overland and the Sydney Review of Books. Leane was the recipient of the University of Canberra Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Poetry Prize, the Oodgeroo Noonuccal Prize for Poetry and the Red Room Poetry Fellowship. In 2020, she edited Guwayu – for all times, a collection of First Nations poetry.  

Hermione Lee

GBR

Dame Hermione Lee has written biographies of Virginia Woolf, Edith Wharton, Penelope Fitzgerald (winner of the James Tait Black Prize), Willa Cather, Elizabeth Bowen and Philip Roth. Her latest biography is Tom Stoppard: A Life. 

Kate Legge

AUS

Kate Legge is an award-winning journalist and author who has chronicled social and political affairs since the 1980s. Her novel, The Unexpected Elements of Love, was long listed for the Miles Franklin award. Her non-fiction book, Kindred: A Cradle Mountain Love Story, was a finalist in the Queensland Literary Awards. Her latest book is a memoir: Infidelity and Other Affairs. 

Podcasts on Spotify
Affairs of the Heart

Anatol Lieven

GBR

Anatol Lieven is a professor at Georgetown University in Qatar and a Fellow of the New America Foundation in Washington DC. He worked for 12 years as a British foreign correspondent, reporting from South Asia, the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. His books include Ethical Realism: A Vision for America's Role in the World (with John Hulsman), Pakistan: A Hard Country, and most recently, Climate Change and the Nation State.

Alex Lloyd

AUS

Alex Lloyd began his career as an intern at Pan Macmillan in 2012. He has worked on books by Eddie Jaku, Mark Donaldson VC, Kevin Rudd, Michael Clarke, David Koch, Dr Kerryn Phelps, John Ibrahim, John Birmingham and Maggie Dent. He publishes adult commercial fiction and non-fiction, including as the publisher of Matthew Reilly, Sally Hepworth and Di Morrissey. 

Podcasts on Spotify
My Editor and Me

Ben Macintyre

GBR

Ben Macintyre is the bestselling author of ten books, including Agent Sonya, SAS: Rogue Heroes, The Spy and the Traitor, Agent Zigzag, Operation Mincemeat and A Spy Among Friends. He is a columnist and Associate Editor at The Times, and has worked as the newspaper's correspondent in New York, Paris and Washington. He regularly presents a BBC series based on his acclaimed books. His latest book is Colditz: Prisoners of the Castle.

Raina MacIntyre

AUS

Raina MacIntyre is a specialist physician with a Masters and PhD in epidemiology, training in shoe-leather investigation of outbreaks and over 400 scientific publications. She is a leader in emerging infections, bioterrorism, vaccines and facemasks and on expert committees for the WHO. Her book Dark Winter has just been published.

Alison MacLeod

CAN/GBR

Alison MacLeod is the author of novels The Changeling, The Wave Theory of Angels, Unexploded (longlisted for the 2013 Man Booker Prize) and two story collections. Her latest novel, Tenderness, was named a book of the year by The New York Times.

Kim Mahood

AUS

Kim Mahood is a writer and artist who grew up in Central Australia and on Tanami Downs Station. She has worked closely with Aboriginal people across Australia’s desert regions, maintains strong connections with Warlpiri and Walmajarri people. She is the author of Wandering With Intent, Craft for a Dry Lake and Position Doubtful and is the co-editor of Desert Lake: art, science and stories from Paruku.  

Samantha Maiden

AUS

Samantha Maiden is the political editor for news.com.au and won the Gold Walkley in 2022. She has won three Walkleys in total for her coverage of federal politics and was named the Graham Perkin Australian Journalist of the Year, Kennedy Awards Journalist of the Year and Press Gallery Journalist of the Year for 2021. A press gallery veteran, she has covered federal politics for more than 20 years. Her new book, Open Secrets, will be published by Harper Collins. 

Saree Makdisi

USA

Saree Makdisi is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Los Angeles. His books include Making England Western: Occidentalism, Race, and Imperial Culture (2014), Reading William Blake (2015) and Tolerance is a Wasteland: Palestine and the Culture of Denial (2022).

Paddy Manning

AUS

Paddy Manning is the author of several award-winning books, including biographies of Malcolm Turnbull and Nathan Tinkler. His 2020 book, Body Count: How Climate Change is Killing Us, won the 2021 Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Nonfiction. His latest book is Successor, a biography of Lachlan Murdoch.

Grant McAvaney

AUS

Grant McAvaney is a senior media and entertainment lawyer with extensive litigation and commercial law experience. He has worked on a variety of complex and high-profile matters coming from all areas including publishing, print media, radio, television, news, comedy, and online. As well as working within major organisations such as Nine MSN, ABC, Australian Copyright Council and News Corp Australia, Grant has also received several Pro Bono Awards from the Arts Law Centre of Australia. 

Alexander McCall Smith

GBR

Alexander McCall Smith is the author of over one hundred books on a wide array of subjects, including the award-winning The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency series. He is also the author of the Isabel Dalhousie novels and the world's longest-running serial novel, 44 Scotland Street. His books have been translated into 46 languages.

Podcasts on Spotify
Meet a Polymath

Fiona McFarlane

AUS

Fiona McFarlane is the author of the novel The Night Guest, which was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award, and a collection of short stories, The High Places, which won the International Dylan Thomas Prize. Her new novel is The Sun Walks Down. 

Podcasts on Spotify
Unbelonging

Maxine McKew

AUS

Maxine McKew is Hon Professorial Fellow at the University of Melbourne. A former ABC and Bulletin journalist, as well as a former Federal Labor MP, McKew can rightly claim to be among the first of the modern political disrupters, having defeated prime minister John Howard in the seat of Bennelong in 2007. She has written two books: Tales from the Political Trenches and Class Act.

Sally McManus

AUS

Sally McManus is the 10th Secretary of the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) and commenced work with them as an ACTU Trainee Organiser in 1994. McManus has also worked as a Pizza Hut delivery driver, shop assistant and cleaner, and studied Philosophy at University. Her first book is On Fairness. 

Sophie McNeill

AUS

Sophie McNeill is the Australia researcher for Human Rights Watch. She was formerly an investigative reporter with ABC TV’s Four Corners, and a foreign correspondent for the ABC and SBS in the Middle East, winning three Walkley awards for her coverage of Syria, Yemen and Afghanistan. She is the author of We Can’t Say We Didn’t Know: Dispatches from an Age of Impunity.

Hilary McPhee

AUS

Hilary McPhee is a writer and editor. She founded McPhee Gribble Publishers with Diana Gribble in 1975, was Chair of the Australia Council for the Arts 1994–97, and inaugural Vice-Chancellor’s Fellow at Melbourne University until 2004. Her books include Other People’s Words, Wordlines and Memoirs of a Young Bastard: the Diaries of Tim Burstall. Her most recent book is Other People’s Houses.

Amy McQuire

AUS

Amy McQuire is a Darumbal and South Sea Islander writer with has 17 years’ experience working as a journalist across Indigenous and independent media. She was previously editor of National Indigenous Times and Tracker Magazine, a broadcaster at 98.9FM, a journalist at New Matilda, and Indigenous Affairs Correspondent at BuzzFeed News Australia. Her first children's book, Day Break, was published in 2022, and her first non-fiction book, Black Witness, will be published in 2023.  

Podcasts on Spotify
Holding White Australia to Account

Dervla McTiernan

IRL

Dervla McTiernan’s debut novel, The Rúin, is a critically acclaimed international bestseller published around the world, winning the Ned Kelly Award for Best First Fiction and the Davitt Award for Best Adult novel. The Murder Rule is her fourth book.

Louis Menand

USA

Louis Menand is the author of The Metaphysical Club, which won the Pulitzer Prize in history and the Francis Parkman Prize from the Society of American Historians. His latest work is The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War.    

Podcasts on Spotify
Cold War, Hot Culture

Catriona Menzies-Pike

AUS

Catriona Menzies-Pike has been the editor of the Sydney Review of Books since 2015. She is the author of a book about running, The Long Run, and numerous essays about literature, culture and feminism. 

Miles Merrill

AUS

Performing writer Miles Merrill brought poetry slams to Australia from Chicago. He is the spark for dozens of story sharing programs across the Asia-Pacific region and is the founder of Australian Poetry Slam.

Shaun Micallef

AUS

Shaun Micallef is an Australian comedian, writer, actor, producer and author. After a decade of practising law, Micallef threw it all away for a life in comedy. Since 1994 he has graced Australian TV screens in shows such as Full Frontal and Sea Change, Thank God You’re Here and Talkin’ Bout Your Generation and his own shows - the Micallef P(r)ogram(me), Micallef Tonight, Newstopia and Mad as Hell for the last fourteen seasons. He has received Logies, AFIs, AACTAs and an Aria. He’s also written six books, including his recent memoir Tripping Over Myself.

Jim Middleton

AUS

Jim Middleton has been in journalism and media for more than 50 years. He was the ABC’s Chief Political Correspondent in Canberra from 1988-2007 and the ABC’s North America correspondent from 1980-86. He oversaw Sydney 2JJ’s transition to what is now the Triple J network, presented The World with Zoe Daniel on the ABC’s international service, and worked for Sky News from 2014-2018. He runs his own consultancy, has worked on election campaigns, and provides media and strategic advice to Climate 200. He is currently an adviser to Zoe Daniel. 

Alex Miller

AUS

Alex Miller is one of Australia’s most celebrated authors. He has won multiple literary awards, including the Miles Franklin Literary Award (twice), the Melbourne Prize for Literature and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, and he is the recipient of the Manning Clark Medal for an outstanding contribution to Australian cultural life. His most recent book is A Brief Affair.

Podcasts on Spotify
Life is a Brief Affair

Suzie Miller

AUS

Suzie Miller is an award-winning playwright, screenwriter and novelist whose plays have been produced in 40 productions around the world. Her play Prima Facie is currently the highest grossing NTLive production screened in the UK and will transfer to Broadway NYC in 2023. Her latest play, RGB: Of Many, One recently opened with Sydney Theatre Company. She is currently working on a slate of major screen works, in addition to upcoming novels in Australia and the UK.

Louise Milligan

AUS

Louise Milligan is an investigative reporter for ABC TV’s Four Corners. Her award-winning stories for ABC’s 7.30 on the abuse allegations against George Pell led to the book Cardinal: The Rise and Fall of Cardinal Pell, which was awarded the Walkley Book Award in 2017 and won the 2018 Civic Choice Award for the Melbourne Prize for Literature. Her most recent book is Witness: an investigation into the brutal cost of seeking justice. Her debut novel will be published in 2023. 

Podcasts on Spotify
"May These Words Bring You Home"

Catherine Milne

AUS

Catherine Milne has worked in publishing for many years, including with Penguin Books, Allen & Unwin, and since 2012 with HarperCollins, where she is now Head of Fiction.

Podcasts on Spotify
My Editor and Me

Helen Morse

AUS

Helen Morse has worked with all the major theatre companies and many independent ensembles on a wide range of classics, contemporary Australian and international plays and recitals. In 2018, she was the rhapsode/storyteller in Chris Drummond’s visionary production of Alice Oswald’s epic poem Memorial for Brink at the Adelaide, Brisbane and Barbican (UK) Festivals.  

Rick Morton

AUS

Rick Morton is an award-winning journalist and the author of three non-fiction books: One Hundred Years of Dirt, the extended essay On Money, and most recently, My Year of Living Vulnerably. 

Lorna Munro

AUS

Lorna Munro, or "Yilinhi", is a Wiradjuri and Gamilaroi woman, multidisciplinary artist and regular radio and podcast host at Sydney’s Radio Skid Row. A long-time active member of her Redfern/Waterloo community, her work is informed by her passion and well-studied insight in areas such as culture, history, politics and popular culture. Lorna has travelled the world showcasing her skills and distinctive style of poetry and political commentary. She was also the sole designer and creator of Sydney’s—and possibly Australia’s—first initiative to teach Aboriginal language through poetry, in partnership with Red Room Poetry in 2015. Throughout her career she has been on stage, in films and on paper. She compiled and edited Paper Dreaming: Our Stories Our Way for Cambridge University Press in 2015. Lorna continues to work tirelessly mastering many art forms, raising funds, and supporting and advocating for her community and her people on the local, national and international stage. In 2019, Lorna was announced as a recipient of the Wheeler Centre’s Next Chapter fellowship.

Podcasts on Spotify
Sovereignty and Solidarity

Claire Nichols

AUS

Claire Nichols is the host of The Book Show on ABC Radio National, a weekly radio program and podcast that features in-depth author interviews with the best authors from Australia and around the world.  

Sean O'Beirne

AUS

Sean O’Beirne grew up in Melbourne’s outer suburbs, and studied arts, law and acting. His first book, the satirical short-story collection A Couple of Things Before the End, was shortlisted for the QLD Literary Awards and the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards. His latest book is On Helen Garner. 

Tracey O'Callaghan

AUS

Tracey O’Callaghan has performed internationally in Longford and Dublin, Ireland. She was the 2021 SA State Champion of the Australian Poetry Slam and was the Runner-Up in 2022. She is a raw, passionate poet who seeks to speak the truth, wake listeners up and fill them to the brim with powerful words.

Fintan O'Toole

IRL

Fintan O'Toole is an Irish Times columnist and writer. His books include We Don't Know Ourselves: A Personal History of Ireland Since 1958, Heroic Failure: Brexit and the Politics of Pain, and Ship of Fools: How Stupidity and Corruption Sank the Celtic Tiger. A member of the Royal Irish Academy, he is a winner of the European Press Prize and the Orwell Prize. He is also professor of Irish letters at Princeton University.

Steven Oliver

AUS

Steven Oliver is a descendant of the Kuku-Yalanji, Waanyi, Gangalidda, Woppaburra, Bundjalung and Biripi peoples. He became notorious with ABC’s Black Comedy as a writer/actor/associate producer. He also performs across web series, documentaries and cabaret. His poetry is published in national and international poetry journals. His plays Proppa Solid and From Darkness were published by Playlab.

Brigitta Olubas

AUS

Brigitta Olubas edited Shirley Hazzard's essays We Need Silence To Know What We Think and Shirley Hazzard's Collected Stories. She has just published the biography Shirley Hazzard: A Writing Life. 

Caroline Overington

AUS

Caroline Overington is the literary editor at The Weekend Australian. She is a two-time winner of the Walkley Award for Investigative Journalism, and a winner of the Sir Keith Murdoch Award for Excellence in Journalism. She is the author of fifteen books, including Kickback: Inside the AWB Scandal, which won the $30,000 Blake Dawson Prize for Business Literature; and Last Woman Hanged, which won the 2016 Davitt Prize. She is a judge of the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards in fiction and poetry, and a judge of the Vogel Prize for emerging writers.

Podcasts on Spotify
Start Worrying, Details to Follow

Jason Pamment

AUS

Since he was little, Jason Pamment has loved to dream up stories of adventure – vibrant worlds filled with strange and wonderful characters. He designs award-winning animated films, children's television shows, music videos, commercials and video games. Treasure in the Lake is his debut graphic novel.   

Sara Paretsky

USA

Sara Paretsky was named 2011 Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America. She is the winner of many awards, including the Cartier Diamond Dagger Award for lifetime achievement from the British Crime Writers' Association 1982. She broke all the rules of the crime genre with the invention of V. I. Warshawski; more than 20 novels have followed. Paretsky created the Sisters in Crime organisation to promote women crime writers.  

Gemma Parker

AUS

Gemma Parker is an award-winning poet with work published locally and internationally; she is one of the co-founders and managing editors of Adelaide-based literary journal The Saltbush Review.

Podcasts on Spotify
Thinking Writing Now

Luke Patterson

AUS

Luke Patterson is a Gamilaroi poet, folklorist and musician living on Gadigal lands. His poetry has appeared in Cordite, Plumwood Mountain, Rabbit, Running Dog and The Suburban Review. He has also featured in the anthologies Active Aesthetics, Firefront: First Nations Poetry and Power Today and Best of Australian Poems 2021. His research and creative pursuits are grounded in extensive work with First Nations and other community-based organisations across Australia. 

Alison Pennington

AUS

Alison Pennington is an economist, writer and media commentator who conducts research on economic issues facing working people including the future of jobs, skills and training, and the role of government. Pennington is an Adjunct Senior Research Fellow in Politics, Philosophy and Economics with La Trobe University and previously held a role as Senior Economist with The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work. She recently published Gen F'd: How Young Australians can Reclaim their Uncertain Futures.

Jodan Perry

AUS

Jodan Perry is a Worimi and Wiradjuri man who has been a journalist for 12 years. He is currently NITV's Head of Digital and is the Digital Lead for the wider network Referendum Unit. He has previously hosted news and sports programs on the channel, has also worked as a journalist at the ABC, Channel 9, and was a sports producer at Sky News.

Simon Phillips

AUS

Simon Phillips was Artistic Director of State Theatre Company South Australia from 1990-94 and Artistic Director of Melbourne Theatre Company from 2000-11. His directing credits range from contemporary and Shakespearean classics to musicals to opera. He has also directed the premieres of many new works by leading Australian writers. He has had a long association with Tom Stoppard’s work, having directed Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, The Real Inspector Hound, After Magritte, Arcadia, Rock’n’Roll, The Real Thing and the stage version of Shakespeare in Love.

Felicity Plunkett

AUS

Felicity Plunkett is an award-winning poet and critic. Her books are A Kinder Sea, Vanishing Point and the chapbook Seastrands. She was Poetry Editor with University of Queensland Press for a decade and edited Thirty Australian Poets.  

Ann-Marie Priest

AUS

Ann-Marie Priest is the author of My Tongue Is My Own: A Life of Gwen Harwood, Great Writers, Great Loves and A Free Flame: Australian Women Writers and Vocation in the Twentieth Century, which was shortlisted for the 2016 Dorothy Hewett Award. She was the recipient of the 2017 Hazel Rowley Literary Fellowship.

Vanessa Radnidge

AUS

Vanessa Radnidge is Head of Literary at Hachette. She has published fiction and non-fiction and is very proud to have worked with Favel Parrett, Mark Brandi, Stephanie Bishop, Brooke Davis, Catherine Therese, Deng Adut, Michael Brissenden, Madonna King, Hilde Hinton, Miranda Tapsell, Sean Doherty, Dr Michael Mohammed Ahmad, Ellidy Pullin and Claire G. Coleman, to name just a few.  

Podcasts on Spotify
My Editor and Me

Diana Reid

AUS

Diana Reid was named a Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Novelist in 2022. Her debut Love & Virtue was an Australian bestseller and winner of the ABIA Book of the Year Award, the ABIA Literary Fiction Book of the Year Award, the ABA Booksellers' Choice Fiction Book of the Year Award, and the MUD Literary Prize. Seeing Other People is her second novel. 

Holly Ringland

AUS

Holly Ringland is the author of the international bestseller The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart, which has been translated into 31 languages and is being adapted into a TV series starring Sigourney Weaver. The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart won the 2019 ABIA General Fiction Book of the Year. In 2021, Holly co-hosted an eight-episode ABC TV series, Back to Nature, alongside Aaron Pedersen. Her latest novel is The Seven Skins of Esther Wilding.

Podcasts on Spotify
My Editor and Me

Claudia Roden

EGY/GBR

Claudia Roden CBE grew up in Cairo, but was educated in Paris and in London, where she has lived for many years. Her classic works on Middle Eastern food and Mediterranean cookery include the award-winning The Book of Jewish Food, and most recently, Med: A Cookbook.

Heather Rose

AUS

Heather Rose is the Australian author of eight novels. Her 2017 novel The Museum of Modern Love won the Stella Prize, the Christina Stead Prize and the Margaret Scott Prize. Heather's most recent novel, Bruny, won the ABIA 2020 General Fiction Book of the Year. Her latest book is a memoir titled Nothing Bad Ever Happens Here.​

Steven Lindsay Ross

AUS

Steven Lindsay Ross is a Wamba Wamba man from Deniliquin, with familial and cultural connections to the Wiradjuri, Mutthi Muthi and Gunditjmara peoples. He is a producer, curator, writer and works in First Peoples engagement and strategy. He lives and loves on Dharug Country.

Latoya Aroha Rule

AUS

Latoya Aroha Rule is a Wiradjuri/ Māori, Takatāpui/ Queer Research Associate and PhD candidate at Jumbunna Institue for Indigenous Education & Research, UTS. In 2020, they were selected as one of five racial justice "Guardians of the Year" in Time Magazine’s "People of the Year" edition, and as one of Deloitte’s Out50 LGBTQ+ Leaders of the Year. In 2022, Rule was a finalist for the Australian Human Rights Commission - Human Rights Medal for their work on anti-torture and legislative reforms. They and their words have been featured in Time, The Washington Post, Rolling Stone, Art Gallery of NSW, Art Gallery of South Australia, and in exhibitions in New York, Berlin and the UK. 

Gina Rushton

AUS

Gina Rushton is a journalist, editor, and author. Her reporting has appeared in Australian Associated Press, BuzzFeed News, The Guardian, The Australian, The Saturday Paper, The Monthly, Crikey, Business Insider Australia and The West Australian. Gina’s first book, The Most Important Job in the World, was published in 2022.

Samah Sabawi

AUS

Dr Samah Sabawi is a poet and playwright from Palestine living on Wurundjeri land. Her critically acclaimed credits include Tales of a City by the Sea and THEM. Her books include an anthology co-authored with Ramzy Baroud and Jehan Bseiso, Remember My Name. 

Micaela Sahhar

AUS

Micaela Sahhar is an Australian-Palestinian writer, academic and educator. Her essays, poetry and commentary have been published in the Griffith Review, Overland, Cordite, Southerly, The Conversation, Arena and The Age among others. She was a Next Chapter fellow in 2022 and the recipient of support from the Neilma Sidney Literary Travel Fund.

Sara Saleh

AUS

Sara Saleh is a poet and activist. A campaigner for refugee rights and racial justice, she has spent the past decade working with Amnesty International and CARE International in Australia and the Middle East. She is currently finishing her debut novel and is a proud Bankstown Poetry Slam 'Slambassador'. 

Margot Saville

AUS

Margot Saville practised as a lawyer for one year before becoming a journalist in 1987. She has worked at The Australian, ABC Television, the Nine Network and The Sydney Morning Herald. She is the author of The Battle for Bennelong, a book about Maxine McKew’s successful tilt at former Prime Minister John Howard’s federal parliamentary seat in 2007. Her latest book is The Teal Revolution.

Clare Sawyer

AUS

Clare Sawyer is Adelaide Writers' Week's Programmer for Young Readers and spoken word sessions Hear Me Roar. In 2021, she produced the documentary Recorder Queen that screened on ABC TV. Clare has programmed festival content for Sydney Writers’ Festival, Sydney Film Festival and Flickerfest, as well as working with the Youth Jury at the Berlinale Film Festival, Germany. Currently, she is Senior Lecturer in Producing at the Australian Film Television and Radio School. 2023 is her fifth year programming for Adelaide Writers' Week.

Ben Schneiders

AUS

Ben Schneiders is an investigative journalist at The Age with a focus on workplace issues, politics, business and corruption. A Walkley award winner, he is a four-time winner of the Industrial Relations reporting award and author of the recently released book Hard Labour: wage theft in the age of inequality. 

Mark Scott

AUS

Mark Scott is the Vice-Chancellor and President of the University of Sydney. For a decade, he was Managing Director, overseeing its transition to being a great public broadcaster of the digital age. Before that, he was Editor-in-Chief for Fairfax’s Metropolitan and Community newspapers, including The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. Most recently, he was Secretary of the NSW Department of Education. Until the beginning of this year, he was Chair of the Sydney Writer’s Festival and has recently been appointed Chair of The Conversation Media Group.

Craig Silvey

AUS

Craig Silvey is an author whose critically acclaimed debut novel, Rhubarb, was published in 2004. His bestselling novel, Jasper Jones, was released in 2009 and was the 2010 Australian Book Industry Awards Book of the Year. Craig's third novel Honeybee was published in 2019 and won Best Fiction for the Indie Book Awards 2021 and Dymock's Book of the Year 2020. His latest novel, Runt, was published in October 2022. 

Peter Singer

AUS

Peter Singer, professor of bioethics at Princeton University, has written, co-authored, edited or co-edited more than 40 books, including Animal Liberation, Practical Ethics, The Life You Can Save, and Ethics in the Real World. He is the founder of the charity The Life You Can Save. In 2021 he was awarded the $1 million Berggruen Prize for Philosophy and Culture, which he donated to non-profit organisations working for the causes he supports. 

Raja Shehadeh

PSE

Raja Shehadeh is a lawyer, a writer and the founder of pioneering Palestinian human rights organisation Al Haq. Shehadeh is the author of several acclaimed books, including the Orwell Prize-winning Palestinian Walks, Strangers in the House; Occupation Diaries; Language of War, Language of Peace; A Rift in Time; Where the Line is Drawn and Going Home: A Walk Through Fifty Years of Occupation. His most recent book is We Could Have Been Friends, My Father and I. In 2022, he was chosen as an international writer of the Royal Society of Literature. He lives in Ramallah, Palestine. 

Beejay Silcox

AUS

Beejay Silcox is an Australian writer and critic, and the recipient of ABR’s Fortieth Birthday Fellowship. Her literary criticism and cultural commentary regularly appears in national arts publications, and is increasingly finding an international audience, including in the Times Literary Supplement, The Guardian and The New York Times. Her award-winning short stories have been published at home and abroad, and have been selected for a number of Australian anthologies.

Podcasts on Spotify
The Aussie Queen of Noir

David Sly

AUS

David Sly has an unceasing appetite for the great things in life and has pursued stories that explore the vast domains of food, wine, travelling and human endeavour. Through a 45-year career as a journalist and author, he has obtained a degree in gastronomy and writes and engages with music, literature, theatre, comedy, snow skiing, cycling and sports. He has published several biographies and history books. 

Ahdaf Soueif

EGY/GBR

Ahdaf Soueif is the author of the bestselling The Map of Love (shortlisted for the Booker Prize and translated into more than 30 languages). Her collection of essays, Mezzaterra, has been influential and her articles for The Guardian in the UK are published in the European and American press. In 2007, she co-founded the Palestine Festival of Literature, which takes place annually in occupied Palestine. Among other honours, she was awarded the first Mahmoud Darwich Award in 2010 and the European Culture Foundation Princess Margriet Award in 2019. In 2020, after serving for seven years, Ahdaf resigned from the British Museum Board of Trustees.

Podcasts on Spotify
The Eminence Grise of Arab Literary Culture

David Speers

AUS

David Speers has won two individual Walkley Awards for interviewing, along with a number of other Walkley, Logie and Kennedy Awards for his journalism. He also won the Press Gallery Journalist of the Year Award. David spent 20 years working from the Canberra Press Gallery, serving three years as Gallery President and 15 years on the board of the National Press Club. His first book, On Mutiny, was published in 2018. 

Scott Stephens

AUS

Scott Stephens is the ABC’s Religion and Ethics online editor. With Waleed Aly, he co-hosts The Minefield on ABC Radio National and co-authored Quarterly Essay Uncivil Wars. 

Tom Stoppard

GBR

Sir Tom Stoppard began his working life in 1954 as a junior reporter on the Western Daily Press. In 1967, his first full-length play, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, was staged by the National Theatre. This play was followed by other award-winning works, including Jumpers, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour (with Andre Previn), Travesties, Night and Day, The Real Thing, Hapgood, Arcadia, Indian Ink, The Invention of Love, The Coast of Utopia, Rock’n’Roll, The Hard Problem and Leopoldstadt. His many stage adaptations and translations include Undiscovered Country (Schnitzler), On the Razzle (Nestroy), Rough Crossing (Molnar), The Seagull (Chekhov), Henry IV (Pirandello), Heroes (Sibleyras), Ivanov (Chekhov) and The Cherry Orchard (Chekhov). Sir Tom has written for radio, television and film, with screen credits including Brazil, Empire of the Sun, Enigma and Shakespeare in Love, winner of an Academy Award for best original screenplay. He also directed his own screenplay of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1990), which won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. 

Katrina Strickland

AUS

Katrina Strickland is the editor of Good Weekend magazine. She is the author of Affairs of the Heart: Love, Loss and Power in the Art World. 

Podcasts on Spotify
Affairs of the Heart
Artists and Their Legacies

Anne Summers

AUS

Dr Anne Summers AO is a journalist, researcher, commentator, and best-selling author of nine books, including the classic Damned Whores and God’s Police, first published in 1975 (and still in print), Ducks on the Pond, On Luck and The Lost Mother. Her memoir, Unfettered and Alive, was published in 2018. 

Alex Sutcliffe

AUS

Alex Sutcliffe is an MPhil student in Creative Writing at the University of Adelaide and frequent contributor to the No Wave poetry series. Their writing has appeared in Cordite, Seizure and the Sydney Review of Books.

Podcasts on Spotify
Thinking Writing Now

Peter Sutton

AUS

Professor Peter Sutton FASSA is a social anthropologist and linguist who has, over more than 50 years, contributed to learning and recording Aboriginal languages, promoting Aboriginal art, mapping Aboriginal cultural landscapes, increasing understanding of contemporary Aboriginal societies and land tenure systems, and the successes of native title claimants. He has published The Politics of Suffering and Farmers or Hunter-Gatherers? The Dark Emu Debate. 

Wayne Swan

AUS

Wayne Swan served as Treasurer of Australia for nearly six years, including three years as Deputy Prime Minister. He is the author of The Good Fight: Six years, two prime ministers and staring down the Great Recession (2014). He is currently National President of the Australian Labor Party. 

Grace Tame

AUS

Grace Tame, 2021 Australian of the Year, is a survivor-advocate for victims of sexual assault, particularly those who were abused as children. Her memoir, The Ninth Life of a Diamond Miner, was published in 2022. 

Podcasts on Spotify
"May These Words Bring You Home"

Chris Taylor

AUS

Chris Taylor is a writer, performer and broadcaster who's best known as a member of The Chaser team, responsible for ABC comedy shows such as CNNNN and The Chaser's War on Everything. He is also the creator, co-writer and producer of the award-winning drama Upright for Foxtel and Sky Atlantic UK.

Podcasts on Spotify
The Survivor's Humour

Lenore Taylor

AUS

Lenore Taylor is editor of Guardian Australia. She spent almost three decades as a political correspondent and commentator based in the federal press gallery. She has won two Walkley awards and has twice won the Paul Lyneham award for press gallery journalism. She co-authored a book called Shitstorm on Australia's response to the global financial crisis.

Jol Temple

AUS

Jol Temple has written more than 20 hilarious books for kids with his writing partner Kate Temple. He writes graphic novels like the Underdogs as well as the best-selling picture books series Bin Chicken. When he's not writing books about Bin Chickens, Jol is out visiting schools and talking about why they are such an awesome Australian bird.

Kate Temple

AUS

Kate Temple has written more than 20 books for children with her writing partner, Jol Temple. The Dangerous Business of Being Trilby Moffat is her first solo book. When she is not writing, Kate enjoys eating cake - just like the characters in her book!

Catherine Therese

AUS

Catherine Therese is an award-winning writer, designer and educator whose lifelong passion for articulating the interior lives of people and places has inspired a diverse career in Europe and Australia, where she has lived, worked and published widely across the arts. Her memoir, The Weight of Silence, was a The Age and Sydney Morning Herald Book of the Year, a Varuna Fellowship recipient and finalist in the National Biography and ABIA awards.

Podcasts on Spotify
My Editor and Me

Jared Thomas

AUS

Dr Jared Thomas is a Nukunu person of the Southern Flinders Ranges. He is the author of many critically acclaimed novels for young adults and the co-author of the Game Day series with Patty Mills. His latest YA novel, My Spare Heart, was published in June 2022. 

Eve Thomson

AUS

Eve Thomson is a partner in a national commercial law firm, where she specialises in litigation, media and defamation. She provides prepublication advice to well-known Australian media clients, and has a special interest in the publication of domestic and sexual violence related matters. In 2018, Eve wrote the outline and first three chapters of She Too, and was accepted into a Curtis Brown Creative (London) selective six-month novel writing course. Following completion of the course, Eve completed her manuscript under the mentorship of Orange Screenwriting Prize and Commonwealth Book Prize winning author Lisa O’Donnell. Eve has two young children and lives in Adelaide, South Australia.

Laura Tingle

AUS

Laura Tingle is the chief political correspondent for nightly ABC current affairs program 7.30 and has been the President of the National Press Club since 2020. She is the author of Chasing the Future: Recession, Recovery and the New Politics in Australia and four acclaimed Quarterly Essays: Great Expectations, Political Amnesia, Follow the Leader and The High Road. 

Sue Turnbull

AUS

Sue Turnbull is a lifetime member of Sisters in Crime and Chair of the BAD Sydney Crime Writers Festival. Her books include Media Audiences: Is Anybody Watching. 

Podcasts on Spotify
Meet a Polymath

Brook Turner

AUS

Brook Turner is a freelance journalist who has written for the Good Weekend and The Monthly and edited several magazines including The Australian Financial Review Magazine. His latest book Independents Day explores why it was mostly women who led the independent revolution using classic female organising strategies: as candidates, as backroom organisers, and doing the campaign legwork as volunteers.

Jane Turner Goldsmith

AUS

Jane Turner Goldsmith is the author of the novel Poinciana, shortlisted for a Commonwealth Prize. She has published short stories, poetry, and children’s fiction, and edited a non-fiction anthology of adoption stories.

Podcasts on Spotify
Thinking Writing Now

Ellen van Neerven

AUS

Ellen van Neerven is a Mununjali writer and editor. They are the author of Heat and Light, Comfort Food and Throat. 

Amanda Vanstone

AUS

The Hon Amanda Vanstone is the presenter of ABC Radio National’s Counterpoint and serves on the boards, councils and committees for various organisations, including the Adelaide Festival and the University of Adelaide. She hoards cookbooks and believes chatting about childhood recollections of food, sharing recipes and ideas is the greatest way to bridge boundaries. She remains the longest serving female Cabinet Minister since Federation.

Gaia Vince

GBR

Gaia Vince is a science writer and broadcaster. Her first book, Adventures In The Anthropocene won the Royal Society Science Book of the Year Prize. Her latest book, Nomad Century: How To Survive The Climate Upheaval, explores global migration and planetary restoration in a radical call to arms. 

Chris Wallace

AUS

Chris Wallace is an expert in modern and contemporary politics and leadership, and a former longstanding member of the Canberra Press Gallery. Wallace's books include Untamed Shrew, How To Win Elections and Political Lives: Australian Prime Ministers and their Biographers.

John Warhurst

AUS

John Warhurst AO is Emeritus Professor of Political Science at the Australian National University and a political columnist with The Canberra Times. He has taught and written about Australian politics, including elections, parties, political lobbying and religion and politics for more than 40 years. With Laura Tingle and Laurie Oakes he judged the Political Book of the Year for 2022. 

Don Watson

AUS

Don Watson is the author of many acclaimed books, including Caledonia Australis, Recollections of a Bleeding Heart, American Journeys, The Bush, Watsonia and The Story of Australia. His new book is The Passion of Private White. 

Wendy Whiteley

AUS

Wendy Whiteley OAM is one of Australia's most admired cultural personalities. A designer, curator, guerilla gardener and artist, she oversees the Brett Whiteley estate and the Brett Whiteley studio in Sydney. She is also well known for transforming an unruly mess of weeds out the front of her Lavender Bay home into a beloved Sydney landmark. Now known as Wendy Whiteley's Secret Garden, this stunning living artwork, an oasis on the edge of Sydney Harbour, was Wendy's gift from Wendy to the city around her. She lived in London, New York and Fiji throughout the 1960s with her then husband, Brett Whiteley, before returning to Sydney at the end of the decade with their daughter Arkie and settling in Lavender Bay, where she still lives today. 

Podcasts on Spotify
Artists and Their Legacies

Alison Whittaker

AUS

Alison Whittaker is a Gomeroi poet and a Senior Researcher at the Jumbunna Institute. 

Marian Wilkinson

AUS

Marian Wilkinson is a multi-award-winning journalist with a career that has spanned radio, television and print. She has written several books, including political biography The Fixer, on former Labor powerbroker Graham Richardson, and Dark Victory, co-authored with David Marr. Her latest book is The Carbon Club. 

Podcasts on Spotify
The Planet's Clock is Ticking

George Williams

AUS

George Williams is one of Australia's leading constitutional lawyers and public commentators. He is the Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Planning and Assurance, Anthony Mason Professor and a Scientia Professor at UNSW. He has served as Dean of UNSW Law and held an Australian Research Council Laureate Fellowship. He has written and edited books, including Australian Constitutional Law and Theory and The Oxford Companion to the High Court of Australia.

Paul Williams

GBR/USA

Dr Paul Williams is a psychoanalyst who trained at the British Psychoanalytical Society. Recently, he completed a trilogy on the experiences of the psychotic mind and failing self: The Fifth Principle, Scum and The Authority of Tenderness.  

Sean Williams

AUS

Sean Williams is an award-winning, #1 best-selling author for readers of all ages. His work includes original series, novels, short stories and poems that have been translated into multiple languages for readers around the world, as well as works set in the Star Wars and Doctor Who universes. 

Ashleigh Wilson

AUS

Ashleigh Wilson is a journalist who worked at The Australian for two decades, including as arts editor. His series on unethical behaviour in the Aboriginal art industry won a Walkley Award and led to a senate inquiry. He is the author of Brett Whiteley: Art, Life and the Other Thing and On Artists. His new book is A Year with Wendy Whiteley.

Podcasts on Spotify
Artists and Their Legacies

Tom Wright

AUS

Tom Wright is a theatre writer, best known for his adaptations and translations, and is the host of the Adelaide Festival’s Breakfast with Papers at the Star Kitchen and Bar.

Karen Wyld

AUS

Karen Wyld is a writer living on the south coast of Adelaide. She’s a descendant of the Martu people of east Pilbara. Her novel Where the Fruit Falls won the 2020 Dorothy Hewitt Award and Heroes, Rebels and Innovators: Inspiring Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People from History was an Honour Book in the 2022 Children's Book Council of Australia's Book of the Year.

Podcasts on Spotify
Sovereignty and Solidarity

Joanna Yang

AUS

Joanna Yang is a passionate educator, podcaster, blogger, and now, poet, born and raised in Naarm/Melbourne and now based in Tennant Creek (Warumungu country). After stumbling into the spoken word scene by chance, she has enjoyed every bit of this surreal journey, creating, performing and even calling herself the 2022 Australian Poetry Slam Champion.