Parliament: Melbourne, 2018

Alison Croggon is an award-winning novelist, poet, theatre writer, critic and editor who lives in Melbourne, Australia. She works in many genres and her books and poems have been published to acclaim nationally and internationally. She is arts editor for The Saturday Paper and co-founder of the per... Read more

Beth Driscoll is a Lecturer in Publishing and Communications at the University of Melbourne, and is part of a team that recently received a Romance Writers of America academic grant to study the genre world of romance in twenty-first century Australia.  Beth has written about her experienc... Read more

Christine Gordon is the Programming Manager of Melbourne’s pre-eminent independent bookshop, Readings, and has been in that role for over a decade. She considers this the best job in Australia. Christine was one of the founding members of the Stella Prize, sits on the Readings Foundation board and... Read more

Lili Wilkinson is the award-winning author of sixteen books, including After the Lights Go Out and The Erasure Initiative. She established insideadog.com.au and the Inky Awards at the Centre for Youth Literature, State Library of Victoria. Lili has a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Me... Read more

Lachlann Carter is co-founder of 100 Story Building, a centre for young writers in Footscray that has 99 floors below ground accessible via a secret trapdoor. Before he started working in Melbourne’s deepest building, he worked on Melbourne’s tallest ship, the Polly Woodside, as a not-very-smart... Read more

Marian Blythe is director of Australia’s premier independent comic art festival, Homecooked, and is publicity manager at Black Inc. books. She wrote, produced, and performed in the sellout storytelling show Lose the Plot at Melbourne Fringe Festival, and has hosted numerous radio and podcast... Read more

Shalini Kunahlan is Marketing Manager at Melbourne-based independent Text Publishing. She has worked in publishing for over a decade – her interests include digital marketing and bettering diversity outcomes within publishing. She is the inaugural winner of the ABIA Rising Star Award. ... Read more

Sam Cooney runs the literary organisation TLB, which houses the independent book publishing press Brow Books and quarterly literary magazine The Lifted Brow, as well as running a website, writing prizes, events, and more. He is publisher-in-residence at RMIT, teaches sessionally at several universit... Read more

Jax Brown (they/them) is an esteemed disability and LGBTQIA+ rights activist, writer, educator and consultant. Their tireless commitment to LGBTIQA+ disability human rights and advocacy has been recognised with a Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM). Jax utilises their experience as a queer, trans... Read more

Sista Zai Zanda (Sista Zai/Achihera) is an Afrofuturistic Storyteller. Sista Zai was born in Harare, Zimbabwe and raised in a large extended family. Achihera is Karanga and now lives as a Black African settler on Kulin Nations. Amongst career highlights, Achihera is a 2019 recipient of the Neilma Si... Read more

Elizabeth Flux is an award-winning writer and editor whose fiction and nonfiction work has been widely published. She is a judge for the 2019 Award for and Unpublished Manuscript for the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards and is an editor for Melbourne City of Literature’s ‘Reading Victoriaâ€... Read more

Claire G. Coleman is a Noongar woman whose family have belonged to the south coast of Western Australia since long before history started being recorded. Claire writes fiction, essays, poetry and art writing while either living in Naarm (Melbourne) or on the road. During an extended circuit of the c... Read more

CB Mako is a non-fiction, fiction, and fan-fiction writer. Winner of the Grace Marion Wilson Emerging Writers Competition, shortlisted for the Queensland Literary Awards – QUT Digital Literature Award, the Overland Fair Australia Prize, and longlisted for the inaugural Liminal Fiction Prize, cubbi... Read more

Justine Hyde is a writer, critic and librarian who lives in Melbourne. Her criticism, essays and short fiction are published in the Age/Sydney Morning Herald, the Saturday Paper, Meanjin, LitHub, Electric Literature, Kill Your Darlings and a range of anthologies. ... Read more

Candy Bowers is an award-winning writer, actor, social-activist, comedian and producer. The co-artistic director of Black Honey Company, Candy has pioneered a fierce sub-genre of hip hop theatre that delves into the heart of radical feminist dreaming.   Born of multi-racial South African parents an... Read more

Emilie Collyer writes plays, prose and poetry. Her writing has appeared in Cordite, Overland, the Lifted Brow, Kill Your Darlings and Aurealis, among others. Recent award winning and nominated plays include: Contest, Dream Home, The Good Girl (New York, Hollywood and Florida) and Once Were Pirates (... Read more

Kirsty Murray was born in Melbourne and its stories run through her veins.  An author of books for children and young adults, her works include 11 award-winning novels plus non-fiction, junior fiction, historical fiction, speculative fiction and picture books. Kirsty has been a Creative Fellow of t... Read more

Alia Gabres is a Melbourne based creative producer, cultural broker and storyteller. She has worked with diverse and creative communities in Melbourne in various roles such as Lead Creative Producer for Industry and Creative Initiatives at the Footscray Community Arts Centre, and Lead Youth Arts and... Read more

Eleanor Jackson is a Filipino Australian poet, performer, arts producer and sometimes community radio broadcaster. She is the author of Gravidity and Parity, winner of Small Press Network’s Book of the Year (2022), and A Leaving, both by Vagabond Press. Her live album, One Night Wonders, is produc... Read more