Kathy Bail

KATHY BAIL is chief executive of UNSW Press, a company owned by the University of New South Wales. UNSW Press manages the UNSW Bookshop and represents leading publishers in the Australian market. It publishes about 60 non-fiction books a year, mainly in its NewSouth imprint; in 2016 NewSouth was awarded Small Publisher of the Year at the Australian Book Industry Awards. A former journalist and magazine editor, Kathy is currently a member of the Library Council of NSW, chair of the Education & Scholarship Board of the State Library of NSW, a director of Artspace Ltd and a member of UNSW Arts & Social Sciences Advisory Board. 

Dr Tegan Bennett Daylight

​TEGAN BENNETT DAYLIGHT is a fiction writer, teacher and critic; she lectures in English at Charles Sturt and Western Sydney Universities.  Her collection of short stories, Six Bedrooms, published by Random House in July 2015, was shortlisted for the 2016 Stella Award, the ALS Gold Medal, and the Steele Rudd Award. Tegan is the author of three novels: Bombora (1996), What Falls Away (2001) and Safety (2006), as well as several books for children and teenagers. She lives in the Blue Mountains near Sydney with her husband and two children. 

Dr Bernadette Brennan

DR BERNADETTE BRENNAN is an academic and researcher in contemporary Australian writing, literature and ethics. She is the author of a number of publications, including a monograph on Brian Castro and two edited collections: Just Words?: Australian Authors Writing for Justice (UQP 2008), and Ethical Investigations: Essays on Australian Literature and Poetics (Vagabond 2008). Her most recent publication is A Writing Life: Helen Garner and Her Work.

Deborah Cheetham AO

DEBORAH CHEETHAM AO, Yorta Yorta woman, soprano, composer and educator, has been a leader and pioneer in the Australian arts landscape for more than 25 years. In 2009, Deborah established Short Black Opera as a national not-for-profit opera company devoted to the development of Indigenous singers; in 2010 she produced the premiere of her first opera, Pecan Summer. This landmark work was Australia’s first Indigenous opera, enabling the development of a new generation of Indigenous opera singers, and in 2016 it became the first Indigenous opera to be presented at the Sydney Opera House. In 2014, Deborah was appointed as an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for "distinguished service to the performing arts as an opera singer, composer and artistic director, to the development of Indigenous artists, and to innovation in performance". In 2015, Deborah was inducted onto the Honour Roll of Women in Victoria.
Deborah Cheetham AO appears courtesy of Short Black Opera.

Dr Kate Evans

KATE EVANS is a broadcaster on ABC Radio National (RN), who specialises in books, arts and history. She currently works on Books and Arts and presents Books Plus, but has worked on many other RN programs over the years, from the Comfort Zone to Life Matters. She has a PhD in history and many books (“arguably, too many books”). Kate considers herself privileged to have a job that involves “listening to people talk about ideas and stories”. And she describes herself as “a feminist who has never been afraid of the label”. 

Dr Delia Falconer

DELIA FALCONER is the author of two novels, The Service of Clouds (1997) and The Lost Thoughts of Soldiers (2005), both short-listed for many major awards. The book Sydney, a personal history of her hometown, was part of NewSouth’s City series, winning the “Nib” CAL Waverley Award for Literature in 2011. Delia is also a prize-winning essayist, short story writer and literary critic: her short stories and essays are widely anthologised (as in the Macquarie Pen Anthology of Australian Literature, The Penguin Century of Australian Stories, The Penguin Best Australian Short Stories and various editions of The Best Australian Essays and The Best Australian Stories) and her criticism appears regularly in newspapers and arts journals. She holds a PhD in English Literature and Cultural Studies from the University of Melbourne and is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Technology Sydney.   

Madeline Gleeson

MADELINE GLEESON is a lawyer and Senior Research Associate at the Andrew and Renata Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law at UNSW. She specialises in international human rights and refugee law, with a focus on regional refugee protection and offshore processing in Nauru and Papua New Guinea. Madeline has extensive experience working with forcibly displaced people around the world, including work on statelessness, refugees, human trafficking, labour migration and land grabbing with the Jesuit Refugee Service in Cambodia, and with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Geneva. Her first book, Offshore: Behind the Wire on Manus and Nauru, won the 2017 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Non-Fiction, and has been nominated for a range of other prestigious prizes.

Dr Lisa Gorton

LISA GORTON writes fiction, poetry and essays. Her awards include the Philip Hodgins Memorial Medal and the Victorian Premier's Prize for Poetry; her most recent poetry collection is Hotel Hyperion (Giramondo, 2013). Her novel, The Life of Houses, received the 2016 NSW Premier's People's Choice Award and (jointly) the Prime Minister's Prize for Fiction. Lisa studied at the Universities of Melbourne and Oxford, and completed a doctorate on John Donne's poetry and prose. Her critical work includes editing Best Australian Poems 2013 (Black Inc.) and writing the introduction for a new edition of Christina Stead's novel, The Little Hotel (Text Classics, 2016).

Dr Claire Higgins

CLAIRE HIGGINS is a 2017 Fulbright Postdoctoral Scholar, holding a DPhil in History from the University of Oxford. She is a Senior Research Associate at the Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law and is researching the history of ‘in-country’ programs and other forms of orderly departure. As part of this work, Claire has received a 2016 fellowship from the Australia-European University Institute Fellowship Association, and has previously held the Margaret George Award at the National Archives of Australia. 

Renata Kaldor AO

RENATA KALDOR AO continues to contribute to many areas of public life: she is Chair of the City Recital Hall, Angel Place; serves on the Board of The Sydney Children’s Hospital Network; is on the Advisory Boards of The Andrew and Renata Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law (UNSW) and the NSW Alzheimer’s association. Her previous positions have included being a Trustee of the Sydney Opera House; Judicial Commissioner of NSW; the Deputy Chancellor of Sydney University; Board Member of The Sydney Symphony Orchestra; Director of The Australian World Orchestra; Chair of Women’s Advisory Council of NSW; Board Director of NSW State Rail Authority; Director of The Garvan Foundation; Director of Public Interest Law Clearing House. Renata was honoured with the award of an AO in 2002 and a Centenary Medal in 2003, and in 2005 became an Honorary Fellow of The University of Sydney.  

Dr Karen Lamb

KAREN LAMB is the author of Thea Astley: Inventing Her Own Weather (UQP, 2015),  which won the prestigious Prime Minister’s Award for Non-Fiction for 2016, as well as being shortlisted for five national literary awards. Other publications on Australian authors include an edited collection of short stories (Uneasy Truces) and the first critical book on Peter Carey (Peter Carey, The Genesis of Fame). She received her doctorate from Monash University and is now a Senior Lecturer in literature at the Australian Catholic University in Sydney. 

Kate Middleton

KATE MIDDLETON was the inaugural Sydney City Poet (September 2011-September 2012).  In 2009, her poetry collection, Fire Season (Giramondo) was awarded the Western Australian Premier’s Award for Poetry. That collection included the poem, “Rainbow’s End”, which had won the Bruce Dawe National Poetry Prize in 2006. Kate’s second collection, Ephemeral Waters (Giramondo 2013), was shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s award in 2014. Kate herself has a degree in music, majoring in composition, and her poems have been set to music by many Melbourne composers. She has written the libretti for three operas, including Lapse by Alan Lee, which was performed in 2002 at Melba Hall and the Museum of Victoria.   

Lucy Palmer

LUCY PALMER is an award-winning radio documentary maker, journalist, writer, editor and ghost writer. In 2016 she published the highly acclaimed book, A Bird on My Shoulder (Allen & Unwin), a personal memoir about love and loss. Also published in 2016 was the book Playing the Game: Life and Politics in Papua New Guinea, by Sir Julius Chan (UQP), for which Lucy acted as ghost writer, editor, agent and publicist. Lucy has worked for the Sydney Morning Herald, the BBC, AAP, and was awarded a Gold Medal at the New York Arts Festival for her radio documentary, Birdsville to Alice. She lives in the Southern Highlands.

Alana Valentine

ALANA VALENTINE is a multi-award winning Australian playwright. Her awards include the 2004 Queensland Premier's Award for Best Drama Script, the 2003 NSW Writer's Fellowship, the 2002 Rodney Seaborn Playwright's Award, an International Writing Fellowship at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre in London, a residency at the Banff Playwrights' Conference in Canada, the ANPC/New Dramatists Award in NYC, a Churchill Fellowship, the NSW Premier's Award and a Centenary Medal. Alana is well known for her verbatim theatre, using the spoken words of real people. Her many plays include Run Rabbit Run, Ladies’ Day, Parramatta Girls, Cold Light, The Sex Act, Barefoot Divas, and Letters to Lindy.