HANNAH KENT

Hannah Kent’s first novel, the international bestseller, Burial Rites (2013), was translated into over 30 languages and won the ABIA Literary Fiction Book of the Year, the Indie Awards Debut Fiction Book of the Year, and the Victorian Premier's People's Choice Award. It was shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction and the Guardian First Book Award, the Stella Prize, and the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, amongst others. It is currently being adapted for film by Sony TriStar.

Hannah’s second novel, The Good People (2016) has been translated into 10 languages and was shortlisted for the Walter Scott Award for Historical Fiction, the Indie Books Award for Literary Fiction, the ABIA Literary Fiction Book of the Year, and the Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction. It is currently being adapted for film by Aquarius Productions.

Hannah’s latest novel, Devotion (2021) won Booktopia’s Favourite Australian Book Award, and was shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Fiction, the Indie Book Awards for Literary Fiction, and the ABIA Literary Fiction Book of the Year. It is currently being adapted for film by Dollhouse Pictures.

Hannah’s original feature film, Run Rabbit Run, starring Sarah Snook (Succession), was directed by Daina Reid (The Handmaid’s Tale) and produced by Carver and XYZ Films. It premiered in the Midnight Section of the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, with Netflix acquiring a majority of global rights. Hannah is also writing screenplays for The Good People and Devotion.

Hannah co-founded Australian literary publication Kill Your Darlings with Rebecca Starford. She has written for The New York Times, Vogue Australia, The Saturday Paper, The Guardian, the Age, the Sydney Morning Herald, Meanjin, Qantas Magazine and LitHub.

Hannah lives and works on Peramangk Country in South Australia.

Stephanie Radok

Stephanie Radok is an artist and writer living in Adelaide on Kaurna land.

Her most recent book published in April 2025 is Under The Bed / Inventories 2020-2022. Her first book An Opening: Twelve Love Stories about Art was longlisted for the inaugural Stella Prize.

Michelle de Kretser

Michelle de Kretser was born in Sri Lanka. An honorary associate of the English Department at the University of Sydney, she has won several awards for her fiction.

Theory & Practice is her seventh novel, and was recently awarded the 2025 Stella Prize.

Astrid Edwards, 2025 Stella Prize Chair of Judges, said:
Theory & Practice is an exceptional novel of hyper realism in which Michelle de Kretser, an author at the height of her powers, interrogates the messiness of life found in the gap between theory and practice.

She lives in Warrane/Sydney on unceded Gadigal land.

JO CASE

Jo Case is an Adelaide-based writer, editor and critic who is Deputy Editor, Books & Ideas at The Conversation. She has been associate publisher at Wakefield Press, deputy editor of Australian Book Review, books editor of The Big Issue and associate editor of Kill Your Darlings.

A former program manager of Melbourne Writers Festival, Jo was a co-founder of the Feminist Writers Festival and a founding board member of the Stella Prize. She is the author of the memoir Boomer and Me (2013) and co-editor, with Clem Bastow, of a forthcoming anthology of essays by autistic women and gender-diverse writers for UQP. Her personal essays have been published in the anthologies Mothermorphosis (MUP, 2015) and Rebellious Daughters (Ventura Press, 2016). Her cultural criticism has been published in Age, Sydney Morning Herald, Guardian, Australian Book Review and The Monthly and she writes a monthly books column for Adelaide’s InReview.

HEATHER TAYLOR-JOHNSON

Heather Taylor-Johnson lives and writes on Kaurna land near Port Adelaide. Her third novel is a work of autofiction, called Little Bit. Before that, Jean Harley was Here was shortlisted for the Readings Prize for New Fiction.

Her essays on art and illness have won the Island Nonfiction Prize and been shortlisted for ABR’s Calibre Prize. Her most recent poetry books are the verse novel Rhymes with Hyenas and the collection Alternative Hollywood Ending. She is the editor of Shaping the Fractured Self: Poetry of Chronic Illness and Pain, read widely in disability circles. She is an Adjunct Research Fellow at the J M Coetzee Centre for Creative Practice.

Julia Lester

Julia Lester has worked as a Radio Broadcaster and Producer, TV Current Affairs Reporter, Public Speaker, MC of events, concerts and conferences, Interviewer, News Journalist, Teacher, Actor and Musician.