Amani Uduman is a children’s author and primary school teacher from Melbourne. In addition to her teaching degree, Amani has graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Applied Science, Health Promotion from Deakin University. She has numerous titles published by a non-profit organisation called Library for All, Australia, and her work has been included in many fundraising anthologies.

In her spare time, Amani enjoys reading, writing, walking and listening to R&B music. She also has a keen interest in metaphysics.

Irma Gold is an award-winning author and editor. She has previously published a short fiction collection, Two Steps Forward, and her short fiction has been widely published in anthologies and journals like Meanjin, Island, Westerly, Going Down Swinging and Review of Australian Fiction, among many others. She has also published three children’s books, with another two forthcoming in 2021. She is co-host of the Secrets from the Green Room writing podcast.

The Breaking is her debut novel. It won the NSW Writers’ Centre Varuna Fellowship Award and received development funding from artsACT and CAPO. Irma is Ambassador for Thailand’s Save Elephant Foundation and has worked with rescued elephants in Chiang Mai, Surin and Kanchanaburi. www.irmagold.com

Born in Indonesia of French parents, and brought up in France and Australia, Sophie Masson is the award-winning and internationally-published author of over 60 books for children, young adults and adults. A former chair of the Australian Society of Authors and current chair of the New England Writers’ Centre, in 2019 Sophie received an AM (Member, General Division) award in the Order of Australia. Continue reading Sophie Masson →

Mandy Foot’s obsession with drawing animals began when she was two, with chalk, on her grandparents’ pavement. Now as a best-selling children’s book illustrator and author of over 20 books, her canvas has evolved and her studio is shared with her joined-at-the-hip Border Collies. An Ambassador for Raising Literacy Australia, Mandy shares her passion of literacy and drawing via workshops with thousands of school students every year.

Robert Moore lives in Adelaide and is a published author of several children’s books and fiction as well as numerous poems, articles and short stories. He won the inaugural Feast Short Story Competition and was awarded a special commendation by AsthmaSA for his play Breathe Easy which was written and workshopped in conjunction with the children and staff from Para Hills Primary School.

Benjamin Johnston works as a mild-mannered architect by day but roams imaginary streets as a masked vigilante-illustrator by night. Add to this that he is also a husband and dad of two girls… and he is really looking forward to the day he might actually have enough time for everything he wants to get done. Drawing and illustrating for children have always been his passion. He is the illustrator and co-creator of the successful STEM-inspired Engibears series.

Steve Heron’s passion is to write quality kids’ books that will touch and tickle kids’ hearts and foster hope. Steve’s first series of picture books that focus on social issues were released in 2007. His first middle-grade novel Maximus was published by Serenity Press in 2018. Steve completed a Diploma of Children’s Writing and Publishing in 2015 and in 2016 received an Order of Australia Medal for his contribution to the social and emotional wellbeing of children. Ling Li’s Lantern is Steve’s first stand-alone picture book.

Margaret Hickey is an award-winning author and playwright from North East Victoria.

Hickey’s work has been shortlisted and won prizes in many awards, including the AAWP/ASSF Short Story Award and the Grace Marion Award. Margaret holds a PhD in Creative writing and teaches English at La Trobe University.

Margaret’s short story collection, Rural Dreams, was published by MidnightSun in October 2020.

For decades Marian Matta wrote whatever was called for, from medical articles and historical research to film scripts, but she began concentrating on the short story format in 2006 after being inspired by Annie Proulx’s Brokeback Mountain.

Her stories have subsequently appeared in several anthologies, but Life, Bound is her first solo collection. A grandmother, history tragic, internet junkie and circus student, she lives in Victoria’s Dandenong Ranges with her husband, and is pleased to call Heath Ledger her muse. Optimism is her watchword.

Marian’s collection of short stories, Life, Bound, was published by MidnightSun in October 2020.

Hannah Sommerville is an award-winning picture book illustrator from the South Coast of NSW. With over a decade of experience in illustration, Hannah has now illustrated more than a dozen picture books.
In 2022 her book Jetty Jumping, written by Andrea Rowe, published by Hardie Grant Children’s Publishing, was awarded the CBCA Book of the Year — Early Childhood. Her illustrations, which include watercolour, gouache, coloured pencil and digital mediums, are inspired by the playfulness and tenderness of family life and are drawn from her own memories of childhood and experiences as a mother.

Mike Dumbleton is an award-winning picture book writer with 10 ‘Notable Books’ selected by the Children’s Book Council of Australia. His book, Muddled-up Farm, was the Speech Pathology Australia Book of the Year, 2004, and Cat was a CBCA Honour Book, 2008.

Additionally, Anisa’s Alphabet gained international recognition as a White Ravens reading recommendation (2021 Munich). Mike has also received a Federal Minister’s Award for Outstanding Contribution to Improving Literacy for his work as an educator and a writer over an extended period of time.

In his spare time, Mike enjoys reading, travelling, trying to keep fit, listening to jazz and watching sport.

Dominic Carew is a lawyer and writer from Sydney. He has practised law in Sydney, London, Hong Kong and the Cayman Islands in leading global law firms and financial institutions. He has an MA in Creative Writing from UTS, for which he received an Outstanding Student Award. Dominic has won or been shortlisted for many major short story awards, including the Commonwealth Short Story Prize.

No Neat Endings is Dominic’s first collection of stories.

Following a law degree and qualifying as a chartered accountant, Beverley McWilliams worked in corporate tax before running her own consultancy business. But she decided life was too short for facts and figures, and she ditched the rat race to pursue her dream of becoming a writer. Now Beverley happily spends her days surrounded by books: writing, reading, pondering and eating way too much chocolate.

Beverley publishes work in children’s magazines and particularly enjoys writing historical non-fiction. Beverley’s debut picture book Born to Fly was published by MidnightSun mid-2019.

Beverley lives in Adelaide with her husband, four children and a menagerie of pets, who provide endless inspiration.

Amber Moffat is a writer and visual artist based in Western Australia. She believes that being able to share stories is the most magnificent thing about being human. Amber is originally from New Zealand and still has strong ties to her hometown of Dunedin. She is an experienced teacher and a fierce advocate for arts education.

At the end of 2015 Amber was awarded an Emerging Writers’ Mentorship by the Australian Society of Authors. The judges said of her work, “This picture book text was absolutely wonderful – lyrical, evocative, poetic, and quite unusual. It had a really unique voice, and the imagery was very striking.”

Amber was the recipient of a Paper Bird Fellowship in 2018, and she completed the final artwork for her debut picture book, I Would Dangle the Moon, during her residency at Fremantle’s Paper Bird Books and Arts.

Rachel Hennessy is the award-winning author of five novels of contemporary fiction: The Quakers (Wakefield Press, 2008), The Heaven I Swallowed (Wakefield Press, 2013)), and the three books in The Burning Days trilogy: River Stone (MidnightSun, 2019), Mountain Arrow (MidnightSun, 2020) and now City Knife.

Her first novel, about a group of obsessive teenagers, was described by John Birmingham as ‘un-put-down-able’ and was the winner of the Adelaide Festival’s Best Unpublished Manuscript Award. Her second novel was Runner Up in the Australian/Vogel Award, long-listed for the Nita B Kibble Award and described by Australian Aboriginal Studies as ‘an important book’. Rachel lives in Melbourne with her partner and their two young daughters.