The Show of the Year 2018

Casey Bennetto is an award-winning writer, musician and radio broadcaster. He wrote the musical KEATING!, hosts the program Superfluity on Melbourne’s 3RRR, and has appeared in places as diverse as ABCTV’s Spicks and Specks, the Melbourne International Arts Festival and the Festival of Dangerous... Read more

Jan Fran is a Walkley-winning journalist, TV Presenter and internet commentator. Jan is the creator, writer and presenter of the online opinion segment, The Frant, which has been viewed more than 20 million times on social media and earned Jan a 2019 Walkley Award for Best Commentary, Analysis, Opin... Read more

Deadly Funny Comedy National Winner 2014, Steph was named Funniest Aboriginal Woman in Australia. She then moved to Scotland and was runner-up in Hilarity Bites Best Newcomer and a semi-finalist in the prestigious So You Think You’re Funny competition at the Edinburgh Fringe. Aside from tourin... Read more

Shaun Micallef is an Australian comedian, writer, actor, producer, author and bon vivant. 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, then on to his own gigs on the Mic... Read more

Mama Alto is a jazz singer, cabaret artiste and gender transcendent diva. She is a transgender and queer person of colour who works with the radical potential of storytelling, strength in softness and power in vulnerability. In addition to her excellence as a performing artist, she is a writer of in... Read more

Michele Lee is an Asian-Australian playwright and theatre-maker working across stage, audio and live art.  Her work is largely narrative-focused, in comedy and drama and explores stories of women, otherness and found families. She has been commissioned by Griffin Theatre Company, Sydney Theatre Com... Read more

Associate Professor Duffy is an astrophysicist at Swinburne University creating baby universes on supercomputers to understand how galaxies like our Milky Way form and grow within vast halos of invisible dark matter. He is attempting to find this dark matter as part of SABRE, the world’s first da... 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

wāni is a proud descendant of the Bashi peoples of Walungu, as well as the current Incarnation of the Afronaut. He spends his times teleporting through Universes and time-scapes navigating between dreams of becoming the fire-fist pirate king Hokage master of all four elements, and unfolding tales ... Read more

Rebecca Shaw (aka brocklesnitch) is a writer and creator of the parody Twitter account @NoToFeminism, which was developed into an illustrated book. She was on the writing team at Tonightly with Tom Ballard and has written for Hard Quiz and Get Krack!n. She was a writer for the Backburner and deput... Read more

Laura Jean McKay is the author of Holiday in Cambodia (Black Inc. 2013), shortlisted for three national book awards in Australia. Her work appears in Meanjin, Overland, Best Australian Stories, the Saturday Paper, and the North American Review. Laura is a lecturer in creative writing at Massey Unive... Read more

Dilruk Jayasinha is one of the most in demand headliners on the Australian comedy scene. He has recorded an hour long stand up special for the ABC, and is a regular on Network Ten’s Have You Been Paying Attention? He was also a regular actor on the third season of ABC TV’s award-winning Utop... Read more

Ash Flanders is an award-winning writer and performer. As well as acting for other people and creating his own solo work, he runs DIY queer theatre outfit Sisters Grimm with Declan Greene.