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Alex Adsett is a literary agent and publishing consultant with almost 30 years’ experience working in the industry. She has managed Alex Adsett Literary since 2008 and has helped thousands of authors negotiate their publishing deals. She represents over 40 authors and illustrators, including Melissa Lucashenko, Dinuka McKenzie, Isobelle Carmody and more.
Alexandra Almond lives and works on Bunurong land in Melbourne (Naarm) with her tennis-ball obsessed Labrador, Captain. Before turning her hand to writing, previous roles included stablehand, clown, HR assistant, flower buyer, procurement manager, cleaner and human-centred designer, which is her current day job. She likes trains, books, dogs and cups of tea.
EVELYN ARALUEN is a poet, researcher and co-editor of Overland. Evelyn’s collection Dropbear was shortlisted for the 2021 Judith Wright Calanthe Award for a Poetry Collection and the 2022 Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry, and won the 2022 Stella Prize. Born and raised on Dharug Country, she is a descendant of the Bundjalung Nation.
Tim Bach, an avid bushwalker and outdoors enthusiast from Daylesford, is a retired La Trobe University academic and a former international journal editor. He is currently the President of the Great Dividing Trail Association and the editor of The Wombat Post, a community newspaper for Daylesford and Hepburn Springs.
Dr Clem Bastow (they/them) is a screenwriter and researcher from Naarm/Melbourne. Clem works as a screenwriter, story consultant and neurodiversity consultant for film and TV, most recently for Spooky Files (ABC/BBC, 2023). Clem’s debut nonfiction, Late Bloomer, was published in July 2021 and they are co-editor of Someone Like Me.
Eric Beecher has had a long career in journalism, media and publishing. He started his career at the Melbourne Age, was at The Washington Post, The Sydney Morning Herald and the Melbourne Herald. He is currently chair and the largest shareholder in Private Media, owner of several Australian news websites, including Crikey.
Josh Bornstein is an award-winning lawyer specialising in employment and labour-relations law who has successfully sued many badly behaved corporations and acted for employees who were sacked for expressing political views. He is a board member of the progressive think tank The Australia Institute. Working for the Brand is his first book.
Lauren Bourke is the Head of Collections and Curatorial at Sovereign Hill and the Head of the recently launched Australian Centre for Gold Rush Collections. Lauren oversees the care, management and access to Sovereign Hill’s internationally significant collection of more than 150,000 objects, providing strategic oversight of curatorial practice, historical research and interpretation across the museum.
Emma Bowd is an award-winning, best-selling children’s author, and dedicated literacy advocate. A former occupational therapist, she enjoys sharing her love of words and her inspiring author journey of passion and persistence. Emma writes on Boonwurrung land in Naarm/Melbourne, and has lived in Asia, London and many parts of Australia.
Vanessa Bowen is a writer and counsellor from Ballarat. A movie-lover and passionate advocate for sex positivity and mental health, she has written for a number of publications and is a regular guest on The Movie Health podcast. Vanessa was a collaborator for Ballarat Art Gallery’s Queer Views exhibit in 2024.
Kirsten Bradley is the co-founder of Milkwood with Nick Ritar – together they’ve been teaching permaculture design and skills for living like it matters for more than 17 years, currently on melukerdee country in lutruwita/Tasmania. Kirsten is the author of Milkwood (2018), Easy Peasy (2019) and The Milkwood Permaculture Living Handbook (2023).
Tess Brady came to Clunes in 2003. She was a founding member of Clunes Booktown Festival, (2007), and a founding member of Attitude: Ageing Well in Clunes, (2021) . Her book, The Noise of Empty Buildings (2021) tells the story of how Clunes Booktown began.
Sharni Brownbridge is a PhD candidate studying in partnership with Australian Catholic University and Sovereign Hill. Her research looks at the different ways women were involved with communities in the Ballarat region during the 19th century. Sharni also works with Sovereign Hill to see how women’s histories are interpreted in museum settings.
Daniel Burt is a writer, comedian and co-host of Breakfasters on 3RRRFM. He has been senior writer for Hard Quiz, The Weekly, Would I Lie to You?, was correspondent for The Project and interned on the Late Show with David Letterman. Daniel is performing his show Elastic Manifesto at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival.
Brian Castro is the author of twelve novels, a volume of essays and a visual/poetic collaboration with painter John Young. His novels include the multi award-winning Double-Wolf and Shanghai-Dancing. He was the 2014 winner of the Patrick White Award for Literature and the 2018 Prime Minister’s Prize for Poetry.
Em Chandler (she/they) is a proud queer/trans storyteller, theatre-maker, and magician. She primarily makes work for, and works with, kids and their adults, connecting through imagination, wonder, and play. Audiences have described her work as “a boost for the soul”, and the Sydney Morning Herald describes Em as “pure enchantment”.
Keshe Chow is a Malaysian-born Chinese-Australian author of fantasy, romance, and speculative fiction. She won the 2020 Perito Prize, the 2021 Rachel Funari Prize for Fiction, the 2021 Yarra Literature Prize, the 2022 Victorian Premier’s Prize for an Unpublished Manuscript, and the 2023 Uncharted Thrilling Story Award. The Girl with No Reflection is her debut novel.
Nicole Chvastek is a broadcast journalist who presented ABC flagship program Statewide Drive for ten years. She’s worked as a television reporter and anchor and senior produced the Jon Faine Mornings show. She is an ex Democrats political staffer and a Board Member at the Centre for Advancing Journalism, Melbourne University.
Lorin Clarke is a writer, a director, and a performer. Her memoir, Would That Be Funny, is published by Text. Lorin writes for The Big Issue and is directing a documentary about her father, satirist John Clarke. Her children’s book, Our (Last) Trip to the Market, was a CBCA Most Notable Book in 2018.
Aoife Clifford is the author of the bestselling literary crime novels, All These Perfect Strangers, Second Sight and When We Fall. Her novels have been shortlisted for the Ned Kelly Prize and the Davitt Awards and longlisted for ABIA General Fiction Book of the Year. Her latest novel is It Takes A Town.
Elizabeth Coleman is a screenwriter, playwright and novelist. Her many screen credits include SeaChange, Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries and the award-winning ABC adaptation of her smash hit play, Secret Bridesmaids’ Business. Elizabeth is also the author of A Routine Infidelity and A Dance with Murder in the Edwina ‘Ted’ Bristol Murder Mystery Series.
VICKI COUZENS is a Gunditjmara woman from the western districts of Victoria. Vicki acknowledges her Ancestors and Elders who guide her work. Vicki’s contributions in the reclamation, regeneration and revitalisation of cultural knowledge and practice extend across the arts and creative cultural expression spectrum including language revitalisation, ceremony, community arts, public art, visual and performing arts, and writing.
Amy Doak writes mysteries filled with action, adventure, fun and heart. Her debut Young Adult novel Eleanor Jones is not a Murderer won the 2024 Davitt Award for Best Crime Novel; was a CBCA 2024 notable. Amy lives in regional Victoria with her husband, two teenage children, dog, and a very grumpy cat.
Michael Earp is a non-binary writer and bookseller living in Naarm. They are the editor of four anthologies Everything Under the Moon, Kindred, Out-Side, including co-editing Avast! Pirate Stories From Transgender Authors with Alison Evans. Their writing has also appeared in Archer, The Age, PopMatters, The Victorian Writer and Aurealis.
Sam Elkin is a writer, community lawyer and radio maker. His debut book Detachable Penis: A Queer Legal Saga was shortlisted for the John Clarke Prize for Humour Writing. He co-hosts the Triple R radio show Queer View Mirror and was the 2024 City of Melbourne Boyd Garret writer in residence.
Heather Ewart is a much loved, award-winning journalist and the popular host of Back Roads. In a career at the ABC spanning four decades, she’s been senior political reporter for flagship TV and radio news and current affairs programs, and a foreign correspondent. Heather grew up on a farm in country Victoria.
Kristie Patricia Flannery is an award-winning historian of the Spanish Empire. Her book Piracy and the Making of The Spanish Pacific World was published with University of Pennsylvania Press in 2024. She is a Senior Research Fellow at the Australian Catholic University, living and working in Naarm.
Rebecca Fraser lives and writes on Bunurong Land. Her work has won, been shortlisted for, and honourably mentioned for numerous awards. Rebecca’s publications include three middle grade novels, a junior fiction and young adult novel, a collection of short fiction, and over sixty short stories, poems, and articles.
Helen Garner writes novels, stories, screenplays and works of non-fiction. In 2006 she received the inaugural Melbourne Prize for Literature, and in 2016 she won the prestigious Windham–Campbell Prize for non-fiction. Her works include Monkey Grip, The Children’s Bach, The First Stone and three volumes of her diaries. She lives in Melbourne.
Costa Georgiadis is a landscape architect, environmental educator and award-winning TV presenter who has an all-consuming passion for plants and people. Costa’s World: Gardening for the soul, the soil and the suburbs continues to inspire, and young readers can now enjoy his children’s books with the Costa’s Garden series.
Penny Glass grew up in an Australian-Polish-Jewish family hearing stories of displacement and a community disappeared by the Holocaust. After studying drama at the VCA, she worked in community and political theatre. In Chile, she worked with theatre in prisons and co-founded Colectivo Sustento. She currently teaches Drama for Social Action at Griffith University.
Honorary Professor Barry Golding AM self-describes as a ground-up, community-oriented, polymathic, place-based story teller. Barry is widely published internationally in the field of adult and community learning. His most recent book is multidisciplinary, totally different and First Nations-focused: Six Peaks Speak: Unsettling legacies in southern Dja Dja Wurrung Country.
Chris Gordon is the community engagement and programming manager for Readings. She also writes on the topics of gardening and cooking for the Readings Monthly.
Amanda Hampson has been writing professionally for more than 30 years and is the author of nine novels including The Tea Ladies mystery crime series. A runaway bestseller, The Tea Ladies won the 2024 Danger Awards for Best Crime Fiction and was Shortlisted for 2024 Davitt and Ned Kelly Awards.
Jane Harrison is descended from the Muruwari people of NSW. Her plays include Stolen, Rainbow’s End and The Visitors. The opera The Visitors premiered in 2023. Her books include Becoming Kirrali Lewis and The Visitors which won the Indie Debut Book of the Year 2024. She was the Festival Director of Blak & Bright First Nations Literary Festival (2016 – 2024).
Sarah Hayden is a qualified social worker and equine-assisted psychotherapist. Sarah’s professional expertise focuses on autism, neurodivergence, adoption, fostering and complex family dynamics. She is also a mum to five amazing kids, including world-renowned actor, author and autism advocate Chloe Hayden. Sarah was diagnosed with ADHD at the age of 48.
Jess Ho is a freelance writer, journalist and critic. They were previously the food and drink editor of Time Out Melbourne. They have worked on podcasts for 7am and BBC, and is the host and producer of podcast, Bad Taste. Raised by Wolves is their first book.
David Holmgren, co-originator of the permaculture concept, is a pioneering voice in sustainable design and ecological stewardship. With decades of experience and insight, his work has inspired a global movement towards regenerative living. As the author of Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability, Holmgren offers profound guidance for creating resilient ecosystems and communities.
Jacqui is a Clunes resident and a Creative Clunes Board member. She is currently a committee member of the Australian Crime Writers Association and a former co-convenor with Sisters in Crime Australia.
Anna Johnston is a former baby, aspiring octogenarian and emerging Australian author. Anna left a career in medicine to follow her heart into her grandfather’s nursing home where she became the social support coordinator. When injury left her unable to continue, she began channelling her love for older people onto the page.
Kon Karapanagiotidis OAM is a passionate humanitarian, changemaker, gardener, cook, public speaker and bestselling author. He is also a qualified lawyer, social worker, teacher and the founding CEO of Australia’s largest human rights organisation for people seeking asylum, the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre.
Kirsten Krauth is a Castlemaine-based writer, editor, podcaster and 80s tragic. Her latest novel Almost a Mirror was named in The Guardian’s Best 20 Books of 2020 and developed into a successful podcast. She’s also commissioning editor of the anthologies Into Your Arms: Nick Cave’s Songs Reimagined and Spinning Around: The Kylie Playlist.
Amanda Laugesen is a historian, writer, and lexicographer. She is chief editor of the Australian National Dictionary and director of the Australian National Dictionary Centre. She is the author of numerous books, with research interests ranging across the history of Australian English, the social and cultural history of war, and book and publishing history.
Jeanine Leane is a Wiradjuri writer, poet, essayist and critic from south-west NSW. She is the recipient of the David Unaipon Award for her first novel Purple Threads; and her latest book is the poetry collection Gawimarra: Gathering. She is the poetry editor of Meanjin; and she continues to write between Ngunnawal/Ngambri Country and the East Kulin Nations of Naarm.
Carol Lefevre has published eight books. Her novella Murmurations was shortlisted for the 2021 Christina Stead Prize for Fiction in the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards, and the Fiction Prize in the 2022 South Australian Festival Awards for Literature. She holds a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Adelaide.
Sez Lothian is a queer non-binary person who has worked in film and tv, theatre, public art, activism and teaching. They are the author of Guerrilla Kindness and Other Acts of Creative Resistance – Making the World a Better Place through Craftivism and are currently the LGBTIQA+ Community Inclusion Officer for the City of Ballarat.
Gabiann Marin is an award-winning writer. Best known for her children’s books and creative non-fiction, The Medusa Situation is Gabiann’s first novel for adults. When she isn’t working on her own writing she works as a story editor, university lecturer and creative mentor. She is currently completing her PhD in Writing and Mythological Studies.
Erin McCuskey creates cinematic, multilayered films blending archival, found, and captured footage. Her signature style—half-light, overlays, and blurs—reflects her long-sightedness (hyperopia). Exploring feminisms, memory, and death, she celebrates joy as resistance and dance as cultural protection. Rooted in her Irish heritage, she studies Gaeilge and muses to explore the dancing ghosts of her ancestors.
Ben Mountford is Director of the Centre for Regional Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (RHASS) and Associate Professor of History at Australian Catholic University. He is the author of the award-winning book Britain, China and Colonial Australia (2016). Ben is currently working on a history of how the nineteenth century gold rushes impacted Victorian Britain.
Sean O’Beirne is a bookseller and critic, and the author of the short story collection A Couple of Things Before the End.
Sean O’Beirne is a bookseller and critic, and the author of the short story collection A Couple of Things Before the End.
Caroline Parker (BHSc Western Herbal Medicine) is an herbalist, farmer, forager, and facilitator. She grows herbs and flowers for her business, the Cottage Herbalist, where she sells her award- winning, certified organic and wildcrafted tea blends. When she isn’t in her studio hand- blending and packing orders, she is sowing seeds, picking flowers and shovelling compost.
Susan is Vice President of Life Stories Australia. She is passionate about people recording their stories in their own voices. She is a regular tutor on Life Story Telling at U3A in Ballarat and Daylesford and her Life Story workshop in 2024 at Clunes was sold out.
Jordan Prosser is a writer, filmmaker and performer. He is a graduate of the Victorian College of the Arts, and his short films and screenplays have won multiple international accolades. His short story ‘Eleuterio Cabrera’s Beautiful Game’ won the Peter Carey Short Story Award and was published in Meanjin. His debut novel is Big Time (UQP).
Killian Quigley is a writer, a diver, and a Senior Research Fellow at the Australian Catholic University’s Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences. His book Reading Underwater Wreckage: An Encrusting Ocean (2023) asks how submerged wrecks permeate boundaries between human histories and oceanic memories, between artefacts and environments.
Helly Raichura is a chef from Gujarat, India, who runs the popular restaurant Enter Via Laundry and was featured on MasterChef Australia to much acclaim. Never losing sight of her Indian heritage, Helly creates menus that educate guests on the history and seasonality of each dish. Her cookbook, The Food of Bharat, has just been published.
Tim Richards is a freelance travel writer based in Melbourne. His writing has appeared around the world, and in Lonely Planet’s guidebooks. He’s the author of travel books including Heading South, an epic rail journey around Australia, and Ultimate Train Journeys: World. Other works include The Kick of Stalin’s Cow and Mind the Gap.
Andrea Rowe is an award-winning, best-selling children’s author. Jetty Jumping won the 2022 CBCA Picture Book of the Year – Early Childhood winner and 2023 Australian Speech Pathology Book of the Year. In the Rockpools was the 2024 CBCA Notable Picture Book of the Year followed by Amid the Sand Dunes.
Mark Rubbo is chairman of Readings. He is a past president of the Australian Booksellers Association and was founding chair of the Melbourne Writers Festival. In 2006 he was awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia.
Guillermo Ruiz-Stovel is an historian of early modern maritime China and Chinese diasporas. Based at the University of Macau, he writes about Chinese merchants and pirates, exploring cross-cultural trade and connections within the broader framework of global history.
Matthew Ryan is Senior Lecturer in Literature in the National School of Arts and Humanities, at Australian Catholic University. His research considers ideology and ecology in contemporary Irish literature.
J.C. Rycroft is an award-winning queer fantasy author from Ballarat. J.C. is drawn to the contrasts: reluctant heroes transforming the world, desire where it’s not quite sought, and the ludicrous happenstance of luck. They’ve found a home in fantasy – but always with an eye to troubling its conventions.
Michelle’s memoir HUSH was published in 2024. She’s a TedX speaker with decades of experience in leadership development and is a qualified Narrative and Inherited Family Trauma coach. Michelle mentors and advises business owners, speakers and authors to unearth the why, what and how of their great ideas and communicate through personal story telling.
Robert Skinner was born and raised in South Australia. He worked for years as a tour guide before moving to Victoria and founding a short story magazine called The Canary Press. He currently lives in Melbourne, where he works in a bookshop and plays football at the lowest level. He is the author of I’d Rather Not.
Jason Steger was books editor of The Age for 25 years and a regular panellist on ABC TV’s The Book Club.
Dr Mary Tomsic is a Senior Lecturer in the Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences at Australian Catholic University. She is a cultural historian with experience in migration history, film history and gender history. Mary’s research and scholarship is strongly connected to community-based activities, including collaborations with community arts publisher, Kids’ Own Publishing. She is the author of Beyond the Silver Screen: A History of Women, Filmmaking and Film Culture in Australia 1920-1990 (Melbourne University Press, 2017).
TT.O. is a minor famous poet who is going to win the Nobel Prize for literature. Poems include Fitzroy – the Biography, Heide (which was shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s Literary Award) and The Tour. He edits the poetry magazine Unusual Work and was winner of the Patrick White Award in 2024.
Dee White is the award-winning author of more than 30 books for children and teens and wanted to be a writer since she was seven. She’ll do almost anything for a good story, including jumping out of a plane, touring the Paris sewers, and sneaking up on an elephant.
Lili Wilkinson is the award-winning author of more than twenty books for young people, including A Hunger of Thorns, which won the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award, and was a CBCA Honour Book. Lili has a PhD from the University of Melbourne, and is a passionate advocate for YA. Her latest books are the Bravepaw series and Unhallowed Halls.
Clive Willman is a geologist with a long career in the Geological Survey of Victoria and private industry. He has worked in several Victorian gold mines and has contributed to numerous local and international geoscience publications. Clive has produced a series of educational films for his YouTube channel ‘Geology Films’.
Beau Windon is a neurodivergent author of Wiradjuri heritage in Naarm/Melbourne who writes quirky stories and poetry. In 2021, he was awarded a Writeability Fellowship. In 2023, Beau was a winning writer for Griffith Review’s Emerging Voices competition and in 2024, a finalist for the Writer’s Prize in the Melbourne Prize for Literature.
Jan ‘Yarn’ Wositzky grew up listening to stories of his Czech-Scots family escaping post-WW2 Europe and sailing to Australia. He co-founded the much-loved band, The Bushwackers, and created a career of storytelling and music, in theatre, radio and TV, oral history with First Nations people and Australian history shows in schools.
Professor Clare Wright OAM is an award-winning historian, author, broadcaster, podcaster and public commentator. Clare is Professor of History and Professor of Public Engagement at La Trobe University. She is the author of five books, including the bestselling and Stella Award-winning The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka. Her latest book is Ṉäku Dhäruk.