On Five. A Gala Night of Storytelling.

Maxine Beneba Clarke is the author of the acclaimed memoir The Hate Race, the award-winning short fiction collection Foreign Soil, the poetry collections Carrying The World and How Decent Folk Behave, and many other books ...

William McInnes is one of Australia’s most popular writers, delighting readers with his memoirs A Man’s Got to have a Hobby and That’d be Right, his novels Cricket Kings and The Laughing Clowns, and his insight into Australian life since the 1940s, written with Essential Media and Entertainment, The Making of Modern Australia. In 2011, with his wife Sarah Watt, he co-wrote Worse Things Happen at Sea, which was named the best non-fiction title in the ABIA and the Indie Awards in 2012. His latest book is Holidays.

Also an award-winning actor, William has won two Logies and an AFI Award for Best Actor for his role in the film Unfinished Sky. He received critical and public acclaim for his leading role in the film Look Both Ways, written and directed by Sarah Watt, and recently starred in the ABC television series The Time of Our Lives and Hello Birdie.

William McInnes grew up in Queensland and lives in Melbourne with his two children.

Anita Heiss is the author of non-fiction, historical fiction, commercial women's fiction, poetry, social commentary and travel articles. She is a Lifetime Ambassador of the Indigenous Literacy Foundation and a proud member of the Wiradjuri nation of central NSW. Anita was a finalist in the 2012 Human Rights Awards and the 2013 Australian of the Year Awards. She lives in Brisbane.

Anita has won four Deadly Awards for Outstanding Achievement in Literature, for her novels Not Meeting Mr Right, Manhattan Dreaming and Paris Dreaming and for the Macquarie PEN Anthology of Aboriginal Literature.

Les Murray is Australia’s leading poet. In 2015, his first new collection of poems in five years will be published, Waiting for the Past. Bunyah will follow later in the year, a collection that brings together the poems Murray has written about the place where he comes from and by extension about the rural life and small communities of Australia.

He has previously published fourteen books of verse in Australia. His work is studied in schools and universities in Australia and beyond.

Michael Leunig has been drawing and writing for Australian newspapers since 1965. He was born in Melbourne and now lives on a farm in north-eastern Victoria. His work has been widely published overseas and has been adapted in Australia for television, theatre and radio.

Leunig’s many books include The Penguin Leunig, Ramming the Shears, Everyday Devils and Angels, Short Notes from the Long History of Happiness, Why Dogs Sniff Each Other’s Tails, Goatperson and Other Tales, The Curly Pyjama Letters and Strange Creature and The Lot.

Robert Dessaix is a writer, translator, broadcaster and occasional essayist.

From 1985 to 1995, after teaching Russian language and literature for many years at the Australian National University and the University of New South Wales, he presented the weekly Books and Writing program on ABC Radio National. In more recent years, he has also presented radio series on Australian public intellectuals and great travellers in history, as well as regular programs on language.

Robert’s best known books, all translated into several European languages, are his autobiography A Mother’s Disgrace, the novels Night Letters and Corfu, a collection of essays and short stories (And So Forth) and the travel memoirs Twilight Of Love and Arabesques. His latest book is the memoir What Days Are For.

A full-time writer since 1995, Robert Dessaix lives in Hobart, Tasmania.

Eddie Perfect is one of Australia’s most diverse, respected and prolific writer/composer/performers. At the age of 37, he has already made his mark in the fields of comedy, music theatre composition and book-writing, playwrighting, screenwriting, classical music, jazz and acting for stage and screen.

Eddie has won multiple awards for his work both as a performer and a writer, and has worked with top creatives from Baz Lurhmann and Global Creatures (Strictly Ballroom), Simon Phillips and Neil Armfield (Shane Warne The Musical, Keating! The Musical), Richard Maltby and David Shire, Jason Robert Brown, Andrew Lippa (Adelaide Cabaret Festival) to the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra (MSO Town Hall Proms), Opera Victoria (The Threepenny Opera), Bartlett Sher and Opera Australia (South Pacific), the West Australian Symphony Orchestra (Symphony Under The Stars), Malthouse Theatre Company (Babes In The Wood, Drink Pepsi Bitch, The Big Con) the Australian National Academy Of Music, Iain Grandage and UK’s Brodsky Quartet (Songs From The Middle).

Eddie is also a regular fixture on the Australian comedy circuit, most recently hosting the 2014 Melbourne Comedy Festival Oxfam Gala, as well as ABC TV’s Friday Night Crack-Up live TV special. His solo music comedy shows (Angry Eddie, Drink Pepsi Bitch, Misanthropology) have received Helpmann and Green Room Awards, touring Australia, New Zealand, Edinburgh and London. In 2013, Eddie wrote his first play for Melbourne Theatre Company (the black, satirical comedy The Beast), breaking box office records and garnering critical acclaim.

Mark Colvin is an Australian journalist, filmmaker and broadcaster. He has been the presenter of PM, one of the flagship Australian radio current affairs programs on the ABC Radio network, since 1997.

As a foreign correspondent, Mark covered such major stories as the American hostage crisis in Tehran, the events right across the continent as the Cold War began to thaw and the Gorbachev era. As a reporter for Four Corners, Mark made films on the French massacre of Kanaks in New Caledonia, the extinction of Australia's fauna, and the Cambodian peace process. His film on the Ethiopian famine won a Gold Medal at the New York Film Festival and was runner-up for an International Emmy Award.

Stephanie Alexander AO is regarded as one of Australia's great food educators. Her reputation has been earned through her thirty years as an owner-chef in several restaurants, as the author of 14 influential books and hundreds of articles about food matters, and for her groundbreaking work in creating the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Foundation.

In 2014 Stephanie became an Officer of the Order of Australia in recognition of her work with the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Foundation. Her strong belief is that the earlier children learn about food through example and pleasurable hands-on experience, the better their food choices will be throughout life. Her new book, The Cook’s Table, is released October 2016.

Everything she has achieved and worked towards has been driven by her desire to break down people’s anxieties about cooking, to emphasise the beauty of produce fresh from the garden, to demonstrate the pleasures of sharing around a table, so that more of us will choose to live a more joyful and healthier life. Her fifth book, The Cook’s Companion is regarded as an Australian classic, and has sold 500,000 copies. In 2013 this monumental work was adapted as an easy-to-use mobile app.

Best known for her books Bearbrass: Imagining Early Melbourne and A City Lost and Found: Whelan the Wrecker’s Melbourne, Robyn Annear is also the author of an unpublishable novel set in the city in 1893.

Tim Flannery is a scientist, an explorer, a conservationist and a leading writer on climate change. He has held various academic positions including visiting Professor in Evolutionary and Organismic Biology at Harvard University, Director of the South Australian Museum, Principal Research Scientist at the Australian Museum, Professorial Fellow at the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute, University of Melbourne, and Panasonic Professor of Environmental Sustainability, Macquarie University. His books include the award-winning international bestseller The Weather Makers, Here on Earth and Atmosphere of Hope. Flannery was the 2007 Australian of the Year. He is currently chief councillor of the Climate Council.