Omar Musa is an author, visual artist and poet from Queanbeyan, Australia. He has written two novels (including Fierceland), three books of poetry, five hip-hop records, and an acclaimed one man play, Since Ali Died. His work has appeared in The Best Australian Stories and Best of Australian Poems. He won first and second place in the Newcastle Short Story Award and won the Writers’ Studio Short Short Award, and was shortlisted for the Plaza Short Story Award, judged by Booker Prize winner Damon Galgut. His debut novel Here Come the Dogs was long-listed for the International Dublin Literary Award and Miles Franklin Award and he was named one of the Sydney Morning Herald’s Young Novelists of the Year in 2015.

Jane Rawson

Jane Rawson is a novelist, short story writer and essayist, as well as the editor – and former fiction editor – of Tasmanian literary magazine, Island. Her most recent book is Human/Nature: On life in a wild world, a collection of essays.

Alex Cothren is a Lecturer in Creative Writing at Flinders University (Kaurna Yerta). He is a winner of the Carmel Bird, William van Dyke, Griffith Review Emerging Voices and Peter Carey Awards for short fiction. His satirical story collection, Playing Nice Was Getting Me Nowhere, is out now via Pink Shorts Press.

Carol Lefevre

Carol Lefevre holds a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Adelaide, where she is a Visiting Research Fellow. Her novel Nights in the Asylum, Picador (UK) and Vintage (Australia) was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, won the 2008 Nita B. Kibble Award for Women Writers, and the People’s Choice Award. If You Were Mine
(2008) was published by Vintage. She has published short fiction, essays, and journalism, and a non-fiction book, Quiet City: walking in West Terrace Cemetery (2016, Wakefield Press). Murmurations, a novella in eight stories (2020, Spinifex Press) 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. This was followed by The Tower (2022, Spinifex Press) a novel in stories, and a memoir, Bloomer (2025, Affirm Press). Carol lives in Adelaide.

Cate Kennedy

Cate Kennedy has published across genres in poetry, non-fiction and fiction, but is probably best known for her first love: short stories.  She has been writing them since winning the inaugural Scarlet Stiletto Award in 1993, after a 10-year hiatus from writing when she finished a Professional Writing degree back in 1983.  Her work has gone on to be published internationally and her two collections, Dark Roots and Like a House on Fire have been teaching texts on the Victorian School syllabus for several years.  She is currently working on a screenplay, more poetry and a new collection of stories.

Sean Williams is a #1 New York Times-bestselling, multi-award-winning writer for readers of all ages. He is the author of over sixty books and one hundred and twenty shorter publications, including series, novels, stories and poems that have been translated into multiple languages for readers around the world. As well as his original works, he has collaborated with other authors, written stories in the Star Wars and Doctor Who universes, and developed narratives for the stage and screen. He lives in Kaurna Country, South Australia, and is Discipline Lead of Creative Writing at Flinders University.

Hossein Asgari

Hossein Asgari studied physics and creative writing. His debut novel, Only Sound Remains, was shortlisted for both the Miles Franklin Literary Award and the Victorian Premier’s
Literary Awards in 2024. His short stories have appeared in Splinter, Southerly, The Saltbush Review, The Suburban Review, and Overland. Desolation, his second novel, was published in 2025 by Ultimo Press. He works as a postdoctoral researcher at UniSA Creative.

Lisa L. Hannett

Lisa L. Hannett has had over 80 short stories published in venues including Clarkesworld, Fantasy, Weird Tales, Apex, The Dark and Year’s Best anthologies in Australia, Canada and the US. She has won four Aurealis Awards, an Australian National Science Fiction Award, an Australian Shadows Award, and has twice been nominated for a World Fantasy Award. Her latest books are The Fortunate Isles and Viking Women: Life and Lore. You can find her
online on Instagram @LisaLHannett.

Rachael Mead is a South Australian short story writer, novelist and poet. She’s the author of the novel in stories The Application of Pressure (Affirm Press 2020), the historical novel The Art of Breaking Ice (Affirm Press 2023) and four collections of poetry. She holds a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Adelaide and is co-host of Adelaide’s Dog-Eared Readings.

Jake Dean

Jake Dean writes stories and rides waves on Kaurna Country in South Australia. His writing has been published in Griffith Review, Going Down Swinging, The Guardian, The Saturday Paper, Overland, Kill Your Darlings, Crikey, Surfing World and elsewhere. His short stories have won awards including the AAWP/UWRF Emerging Writers’ Prize and the Microflix Best Writing Award and been shortlisted for others including the Griffith Review Emerging Voices Competition and the Newcastle Short Story Award. His short story collection in-progress was longlisted for the 2025 Richell Prize. Read more of his writing at jake-dean.com

Dr Jared Thomas is a Nukunu person of the Southern Flinders Ranges, and the Adelaide University Coordinator, Indigenous Collections and Archives. He has worked as an arts administrator, academic, curator and novelist. His novel Calypso Summer joined the 2015
International Youth Library White Raven list of books that deserve worldwide attention because of their universal themes and exceptional artistic and literary style. His works of fiction include Songs That Sound Like Blood, and the Game Day series, which was co-authored with NBA player and Olympian Patty Mills, My Spare Heart and the Uncle XBox series. His short stories appear in recent anthologies Rivers Flow: Reflections on the Songs of Archie Roach and Ruby Hunter 2025 and Hometown Haunts 2021.

Rochelle Siemienowicz

Rochelle Siemienowicz is a writer, editor and arts journalist. She is the author of Fallen (Affirm Press, 2015), a memoir, and Double Happiness (MidnightSun, 2024), a novel.
Rochelle’s journalism and fiction has been published widely, including in The Age, SBS, Kill Your Darlings, The Big Issue, Metro, ArtsHub and Kalliope X.

A journalist and author who lives in northern inland NSW, Michael’s crime novel Tank Water and its sequel Dirt Trap explore homophobia in country towns and are released by MidnightSun Publishing. An earlier collection of short stories Closet His Closet Hers explores themes that underpin his long-form works. It was published by High Country Books, which also released an anthology Michael edited, Diving Into Deep Water: 2-minute plunges for time-poor literary lovers, and Write Regardless! A no-nonsense guide to plotting, packaging and promoting your book. He has edited and written for the Guardian, Fairfax
Media, Australian Community Media and the Journal of Australian Studies.

Alicia Carter

Alicia is a writer, editor and teacher living and working on Kaurna land, Adelaide, SA. As A. Marie Carter, her short stories, poetry and personal essays have appeared
in Westerly, Seizure, Aurealis, the Review of Australian Fiction, Double Dialogues, and Tiny Donkey, among others. Her short fiction has won several awards, and her manuscript Songs at the End was shortlisted for the Penguin Literary Prize 2021. In 2024, her unpublished short
story collection The Tongue is a Witch was shortlisted in the South Australian Literary Awards, and her novella Minotaur Toes was a finalist for the 20/40 Prize.

Margot McGovern is a YA and horror author based in Adelaide, South Australia. Margot’s debut YA novel, Neverland (Penguin Random House Aus.), was short-listed for the Text Prize and the Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature. Her second novel, This Stays Between Us, was published by PRH Australia in March 2025. Her horror fiction appears in the anthology Hometown Haunts: #LoveOzYA Horror Tales (Wakefield Press, 2021) and issues of The
Dark.

Gay Lynch

Gay Lynch writes essays, novels, reviews and stories on unceded Bunurong land and adjunct to Flinders University.  In 2025, she judged the Creative Prose Prize, AAALS (American Association Australasian Literary Studies), which she had won in 2024.  Lynch launched her debut collection Hebe’s Lament & Other Stories in June at the 2025 ICSSE (International Conference on the Short Story in English), in Killarney. During 2024, she worked on two
short-fiction project teams (ICSSE and KYD).

Lara Saunders is a writer of experimental fiction that delves into the complexities of human nature when it cracks, and the stuff we are made of runs out. She holds a degree in Creative Writing, and her work has been recognised in several prestigious competitions, including twice being shortlisted for the Victoria University Short Story Prize and three times longlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize. In 2021, she was awarded the South Australian
Emerging Writers Fellowship to Varuna, the National Writers’ House. In 2022, she won The Moth magazine’s Short Story Prize, as featured in The Irish Times, and her story “Kippy
Day” was published in two parts by Litro Magazine (UK). Lara is the co-founder of Mockingbird Writers, a collaborative space offering critique, workshops, retreats and support throughout the year. Committed to building an inclusive and generative writing culture, she fosters spaces where difference, risk, and creative honesty can thrive. For Lara, writing is not just vocation but necessity — the thread that keeps her believing something is worth doing.

Andrew Roff

Andrew Roff is a writer living on the unceded Country of the Kaurna people of the Adelaide Plains. Here Are My Demands, his first novel, was published by Wakefield Press in August 2025. His short fiction has appeared widely, and he is a former winner of the Peter Carey Short Story Award, the Griffith Review Emerging Voices Competition and the Margaret River Press Short Story Competition. His debut story collection, The Teeth of a Slow Machine, was published in 2022. When not writing, he is a child-wrangler and lawyer.

Morgan Nunan

Morgan Nunan is a writer based in Adelaide. He is currently working on a short fiction
collection.

Gillian Hagenus

Gillian Hagenus is a Brisbane-based writer, book vampire, and gothic fiction enthusiast. She is a current PhD candidate in creative writing at the University of Queensland. Her short fiction has appeared in various Australian venues such as Island, Aniko, and The Saltbush Review and has won or been shortlisted for numerous awards. In 2025, her unpublished short story collection was shortlisted for the Glendower Award for Emerging Writers in the Queensland Literary Awards. In her free time, Gillian enjoys much of the same activities as she completes for work: reading, writing, haunting, etc.

Rick Slager

Rick Slager is an emerging Nharangga writer who lives on Karta Pintingga (Kangaroo Island, South Australia). He had his first short story published in 2024 as part of an anthology of Aboriginal poetry and prose titled the The Rocks Remain. Both the anthology and his contribution to it received positive reviews at both Adelaide Writers Week and in literary reviews. Rick was short listed for the David Unaipon Award for an emerging Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander writer in 2022. He has also worked as a proofreader and sensitivity reader in relation to First Nations issues for the publisher Allen and Unwin.

Jannali Jones

Jannali Jones is an award-winning Gunai writer and editor. This year she was Guest Editor for Splinter journal’s first ever issue dedicated to First Nations writers. Her debut novel, My Father’s Shadow was published by Magabala Books. She was awarded the 2024-25 First Nations fellowship with Brink Productionsand wrote and produced the award-winning play, Trail’s End, as part of the 2024 Adelaide Fringe Festival. Her work has been published in Australia and overseas, including both fiction and non-fiction, spanning across genres and forms. 

Andrew Roff

Andrew Roff is a writer living on the unceded Country of the Kaurna people of the Adelaide Plains. Here Are My Demands, his first novel, was published by Wakefield Press in August 2025. His short fiction has appeared widely, and he is a former winner of the Peter Carey Short Story Award, the Griffith Review Emerging Voices Competition and the Margaret River Press Short Story Competition. His debut story collection, The Teeth of a Slow Machine, was published in 2022. When not writing, he is a child-wrangler and lawyer.

Marina Deller

Marina Deller is a creative, critic, academic, arts programmer and former bookseller with a PhD in Creative Writing from Flinders University. They write memoir, short stories, the odd poem, and hybrid works exploring grief, bodies, and relationships. Marina’s work appears in Voiceworks, Archer, Baby Teeth Journal, and Westerly amongst others. They live and create on Kaurna and Peramangk land.

Annabel Smith

Annabel Smith is the author of interactive digital novel/app The Ark, US bestseller Whisky Charlie Foxtrot, and A New Map of the Universe, which was shortlisted for the WA Premier’s Book Awards. Her short fiction and essays have been published in Southerly, Westerly, Kill Your Darlings and the Review of Australian Fiction. She has also had countless rejections, struggles with self-doubt and procrastination, and occasionally grapples with crippling envy over other writers’ successes. 

Kylie Cardell

Kylie Cardell is Associate Professor in English at Flinders University. She is a founding director of the International Auto/Biography Association (IABA) Asia-Pacific, co-director of the Flinders University Life Narrative Lab, and is the Essays editor for the journal Life Writing. Kylie teaches and researches contemporary life writing. Her work is focused on the intersection of life narrative, form, and identity and explores in particular the significance of genre in contemporary culture and the politics of autobiographical expression.

Shefali Mathew is the Sir Terry Pratchett Memorial Scholar at the University of South Australia. Born and raised in Vellore, India, she is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she was supported by the Tara and Jasubhai Mehta Fellowship, and the Sonny Mehta Fellowship. She is also the recipient of the Arthur James Pflughaupt Fellowship and was a finalist for the 2025 Halifax Ranch Prize. Prior to her time in Iowa, she taught at St Joseph’s University, Bangalore. She has been published in Tasavvur magazine, The Mythic Circle, Feminism in India and has a short story forthcoming in Overland.

Katerina Bryant is a writer based on Kaurna land. Her first book, Hysteria: A Memoir of Illness, Strength and Women’s Stories Throughout History (NewSouth), was published in 2020

Kendrea Rhodes

Kendrea Rhodes is a visual artist, writer, poet, and doctoral researcher in Creative Writing at Flinders University. Kendrea uses creative practice and Mad studies in her research on the fragmented histories of the former Ballarat Asylum in Victoria. Kendrea was awarded the 2024 AAWP Postgraduate Paper (scholarly) Prize and was commended in the 2025 Williamstown Literary Festival short story awards. Kendrea’s recent work has been published in FWD:MUSEUMS Journal, The Adas 2025 (WilyLitFest), TEXT journal, Provenance (Public Record Office Victoria), Art/Research International, and NiTRO Creative Matters. Kendrea’s artwork is exhibited annually in the South Australian Living Artist (SALA) festival and can be viewed at KendreArt.com.

Lauren Butterworth

Lauren Butterworth is a writer, academic, and producer with creative work published in a variety of outlets including Meanjin, Verity La, Wet Ink, Midnight Echo and more. She was host and producer of the podcast Deviant Women, which tells the stories of subversive, daring, and outrageous women in history and mythology. She is also a live-storytelling enthusiast, and was co-director of The Hearth, a live readings event. When not creating, she is a lecturer at Flinders University.

Simon-Peter Telford is a writer, researcher, and creative facilitator whose work spans fiction, criticism, and arts in health. He holds a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of South Australia, where his research explored the existential novel in the Anthropocene. His short fiction has appeared in Green: A Blue Feet Anthology and Verse Magazine, alongside critical and creative essays in TEXT and New Writing. Simon-Peter also teaches and mentors writers across universities and health settings, bringing his deep interest in story, voice, and meaning-making to diverse communities. 

Emma Maguire

Emma Maguire is a writer, researcher, and lecturer. At JCU, she is a lecturer in English and Writing, and she has worked previously at Monash University and Flinders University, where she has won awards for her teaching and research. Her expertise is in English Literature, life narrative, gender, and media. She is a member of the Life Narrative Lab, and Co-Founder of the International Auto/Biography Association Students and New Scholars Network. Emma writes short fiction, essays, and criticism.