Marina Benjamin is a writer, memoirist and editor. She has written six books, most recently a trilogy exploring the midlife experience in real time. The Middlepause (2016) and Insomnia (2018) were widely acclaimed in the UK, US and elsewhere and translated into 8 languages. Marina’s latest book A Little Give will be published by Scribe in 2023. Marina’s lives in London…

Karen Hitchcock is a physician and author. She holds a PhD in English Literature, is an award-winning writer of fiction and non-fiction, and a regular contributor to The Monthly. Karen worked in major metropolitan hospitals for 17 years before moving into private practice. Her current areas of interest include medicinal cannabis and psychedelic psychotherapies.

Mireille Juchau is a Walkley Award winning writer. Her third novel, The World Without Us, won the 2016 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award. Her essays are published in Heat Magazine, newyorker.com, Literary Hub, The Monthly, LA Review of Books and Tablet. In 2018 she was writer in residence at the Charles Perkins Centre, University of Sydney.

Jaye Kranz is an award-winning documentary audio producer and writer. She has published a novella with Random House, been anthologised in short story collections, and writes occasional nonfiction for The Monthly. Her radio features have aired on BBC Radio, ABC RN, and various podcasts. Her BBC feature ‘Deep Time and the Sparrowhawk’ won double gold…

Anita Lester is a multidisciplinary artist, working between music, writing, visual art and film. Through her work she has toured the world with music, releasing more than a dozen projects, shown in major galleries and museums in London and New York, published a book of poetry and 6 children’s books, won 23 laurels for her…

Kyra Maya Phillips is the co-author of The Misfit Economy, a book which chronicles stories of creativity from informal and dark markets around the globe. She is a director of The Point People, a collective of innovators, artists, and entrepreneurs committed to driving systemic change for a more equitable society. A former economist, she is…

Gideon Preiss has worked as a professional musician since he was a teenager, and completed his Bachelor of Music at Monash University in 2005. He has co-written and co-produced four records with critically acclaimed Australian band Husky and has toured extensively both at home and internationally. He has experimented with a wide range of musical…

Daniel Sherrell is an organiser in the American climate movement. He has led successful campaigns to phase out coal-fired power plants, to divest millions of dollars from the fossil fuel industry and to pass a Green New Deal bill for New York, legislation that the New York Times called “one of the world’s most ambitious…

Simon Tedeschi is known primarily as a concert pianist but has written for publications across Australia. When neither writing nor practising, he reads books and drinks coffee. He and his wife, the painter Loribelle Spirovski, live in Sydney, Australia with their cat. Fugitive, his first book, straddles the borders of poetry and prose, fiction and…

Bryan Walpert is the author of nine books of poetry, fiction and criticism, most recently the novel Entanglement (Mākaro Press), named a best book of 2021 in the New Zealand Listener; Late Sonata (Brio Books), winner of the 2020 Seizure Viva La Novella prize and Brass Band to Follow (Otago University Press), included in the…

Lynne Kent is a Shadow Artist and Theatre Director based in Melbourne, Australia. Her artistic focus is on puppetry and contemporary visual theatre including new media performance. Internationally recognized for her work creating innovative projects involving imagery and audience interaction, she has collaborated with The Victorian Opera, Circus Oz, Terrapin Puppet Theatre, The Royal Society of Victoria, ArtPlay…