The Show of the Year 2019

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

Louise Milligan is an investigative reporter for ABC TV’s Four Corners and the bestselling author of Cardinal, which won the Walkley Book Award and broke massive international news preceding the court case and successive and ultimately successful appeals involving one of the most senior mem... Read more

Paul Kelly was born in Adelaide, one of nine children, in 1955. He wrote his first song in 1976 and has been making records since 1978, over thirty to date. He has collaborated with many other songwriters and written music for film and theatre. His prose has appeared in Meanjin, The Monthly, Roll... Read more

The Merindas are a Contemporary R&B/Electropop duo that present a much anticipated show never seen before on the Australian music scene. They’re the synthesis of warrior queen, bringing an on-trend style of rhythmic, expressive and beautiful music dedicated to the preservation of Indige... Read more

Bill Shorten is the Shadow Minister for the National Disability Insurance Scheme, the Shadow Minister for Government Services, and was leader of the Australian Labor Party from 2013 to 2019. Mr Shorten joined the ALP at 17 and the Australian Workers’ Union as an organiser in 1994, he has been secr... Read more

Nath Valvo’s hilariously physical, high-energy comedy is impressing critics and winning crowds across the globe. Not many comedians can boast that their fan base includes TV royalty, but Nath has the tweet from Graham Norton to prove it. In 2018, Nath’s stand up show, Show Pony won the Adelai... Read more

Sydney songwriter Laura Jean is revered for the striking beauty of her music and the strength of her piercing, intimate lyrics. She has twice been shortlisted for the Aus- tralian Music Prize, and has recorded with Paul Kelly, The Drones, Rolling Blackouts and Grand Salvo. She has toured UK/Europe w... 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

Alice Bishop grew up in Christmas Hills, a town ravaged by the Black Saturday bushfires. A Constant Hum, her much-anticipated debut, was commended by the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript and shortlisted for the Penguin Random House Literary Prize. Stories in the col... Read more

Dr Alice Gorman is space archaeologist and author of the award-winning book Dr Space Junk vs the Universe: Archaeology and the Future (MIT Press, 2019). Her research focuses on the archaeology and heritage of space exploration, including space junk, planetary landing sites, off-earth mining, and spa... Read more

Margot Tanjutco is a writer, director, and actor. They directed And She Would Stand Like This with Antipodes Theatre Company for Midsumma 2022 and are currently part of Theatre Works’ two-year writing program, She Writes Collective. Their experimental digital work psyche404error won Best Work In F... Read more

Evelyn Araluen is a poet, researcher and co-editor of Overland Literary Journal. Her widely published criticism, fiction and poetry has been awarded the Nakata Brophy Prize for Young Indigenous Writers, the Judith Wright Poetry Prize, a Wheeler Centre Next Chapter Fellowship, and a Neilma Sidney Li... Read more

Brodie Lancaster is an author and essayist from Melbourne. Her work has appeared in publications including the New York Times, Vogue Australia, the Guardian and New York magazine. Her first book, the pop culture memoir No Way! Okay, Fine, was published by Hachette in 2017, and she co-hosts th... Read more