Interview

Nicholas Jose is a novelist and essayist whose thirteen books include the novels Paper Nautilus, Avenue of Eternal Peace (shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award), The Custodians (shortlisted for the Commonwealth Prize), and Original Face. His latest novel is The Idealist (Giramondo, 2023). He is Emeritus Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Adelaide.

Diane Stubbings is a writer and critic based in Melbourne. Her plays have been shortlisted for a number of Australian and international awards, and staged in Sydney, Melbourne and New Zealand. She has written for Australian Book Review, The Australian, The Canberra Times, and the Sydney Review of Books. Her study of Irish Modernism was published by Palgrave.

Yasmin Smith is an editor, writer and poet of South Sea Islander, Kabi Kabi, Northern Cheyenne, and English heritage. She has worked across literary fiction, non-fiction, children’s books, and poetry, with a focus on supporting First Nations creatives and their stories. She is currently an editor at University of Queensland Press, where her work includes overseeing its groundbreaking First Nations Classics series.

Anita Heiss is the author of non-fiction, historical fiction, commercial women’s fiction, poetry, social commentary, and travel articles. She is a Lifetime Ambassador of the Indigenous Literacy Foundation and a proud member of the Wiradyuri nation of central New South Wales.

Andy Jackson is a poet, creative writing teacher, and a Patron of Writers Victoria. He was the inaugural Writing the Future of Health Fellow, and has co-edited disability-themed issues of Southerly and Australian Poetry Journal. Andy’s latest poetry collection is Human Looking (Giramondo, 2021), which won the ALS Gold Medal and the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Poetry.

Belinda Alexandra is the daughter of a Russian mother and an Australian father and has been an intrepid traveller since her youth. Her love of other cultures is matched by her passion for her home country, Australia, where she is a volunteer rescuer and carer for the NSW Wildlife Information Rescue and Education Service (WIRES). She is the author of twelve books, including ten historical novels and two works of non-fiction. Her latest book is the memoir Emboldened: On finding the fire to keep going when all seems lost (Affirm Press, 2023).

Felicity Plunkett is a poet and critic. Her books are A Kinder Sea, Seastrands, Vanishing Point, and the anthology Thirty Australian Poets (as editor). Her recent essays are ‘Plath Traps’ for the Sydney Review of Books and ‘Strange Territory: Poems as “gifts to the attentive”’ for Australian Book Review. She was an ABR Fellow in 2015 and 2019.

Helen Morse’s work with major theatre companies and independent ensembles covers a wide range of classics, contemporary Australian and international plays, recitals, and the odd cabaret. In August she will appear in Caryl Churchill’s play Escaped Alone, for MTC.

Nick McKenzie is one of the nation’s most decorated investigative journalists, having been named Australian Journalist of the Year on four occasions and awarded the Walkley a record fourteen times. His investigative reports into Ben Roberts-Smith were central to a defamation trial brought against Fairfax media. Last month the Federal Court found that Nick McKenzie’s account of Roberts-Smith’s criminal actions in Afghanistan was substantially true and that these actions could be said to amount to war crimes. Hachette will release his new book, Crossing the Line, this month.

Robyn Archer is a singer, performer, writer, artistic director, and public advocate of the arts. She was appointed an ABR Laureate in 2016. She has been performing professionally for more than sixty years, throughout Australia and the world, and is known internationally for her expertise in the Weimar repertoire and her artistic direction of major arts festivals.