Mark Brandi's bestselling novel, Wimmera, won the coveted British Crime Writers' Association Debut Dagger, and was named Best Debut at the 2018 Australian Indie Book Awards.

Bronwyn Birdsall is a writer living on Bundjalung Country, in Northern New South Wales. Her first novel Time and Tide in Sarajevo was published in July 2022 by Affirm Press, and has been shortlisted for the 2023 Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction. Her writing centres around contemporary life and finding meaning in the everyday.

Melissa Manning is a Melbourne-based writer and lawyer. She grew up in southern Tasmania and has lived and worked in London and Hungary. Smokehouse is Melissa’s debut collection, and was shortlisted for the 2021 USQ Steele Rudd Award for a Short Story Collection and won the 2022 Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Fiction.

Peter Papathanasiou has written in a variety of forms for many years. His debut novel, The Stoning, has been greeted with a huge buzz in the world of crime fiction. Peter was born in northern Greece and adopted as a baby by an Australian family.

Lisa Fuller is a Murri woman living on Ngunnawal and Ngambri Country, navigating a PhD, freelance work and trying to figure out the dream to be a full-time writer while still feeding herself.

Tania McCartney has around 60 books in print or production, and is published in over a dozen countries. Recent shortlistings and awards include the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards and the Museums Australasia Multimedia & Publication Design Awards.

Shu-Ling Chua is a Melbourne-based (formerly Canberra-based) essayist, critic and poet. Her debut essay collection, Echoes, was published by Somekind Press in 2020.

Karen Wyld is an author and an Australia Reads 2021 Ambassador, living on the coast south of Adelaide, South Australia.