Interview

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.

Ross McMullin’s latest book Life So Full of Promise: Further biographies of Australia’s lost generation (2023) is his sequel to Farewell, Dear People (2012), which was awarded the Prime Minister’s Prize for Australian History. His previous biographies include Pompey Elliott (2002) and Will Dyson: Australia’s radical genius (2006). His political histories are The Light on the Hill (1991) and So Monstrous a Travesty: Chris Watson and the World’s first national labour government (2004). 

Martin Hughes is co-owner and Publishing Director at Melbourne-based independent publisher Affirm Press. Martin has previously worked as editor of The Big Issue magazine, as a writer, editor and photographer with Lonely Planet Publications, and in journalism and public relations in Ireland and Britain.

Dan Disney’s latest books include New Directions in Contemporary Australian Poetry (co-edited with Matthew Hall; Palgrave) and accelerations & inertias (Vagabond Press), which was shortlisted for the Judith Wright Calanthe Award and received the Kenneth Slessor Prize. His individual poems have won numerous prizes, including, most recently, the 2023 Peter Porter Poetry Prize. Disney teaches in the English Literature Program at Sogang University, in Seoul.

Pip Williams was born in London, grew up in Sydney, and now lives in the Adelaide Hills. She is the author of One Italian Summer, a memoir of her family’s travels in search of the good life, which was published by Affirm Press to wide acclaim. Her first novel, The Dictionary of Lost Words, based on her original research in the Oxford English Dictionary archives, was published in 2020 and became an international bestseller. The Bookbinder of Jericho is her second novel and again combines her talent for historical research and storytelling.