Sophie Cunningham is the author of six books, her most recent being City of Trees, a former publisher and editor, was a co-founder of the Stella Prize and is now an Adjunct Professor at RMIT University's Non/fiction Lab. In 2019, Cunningham was made a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for her contribution to literature.

Kathryn Heyman is a novelist, essayist and scriptwriter. Her sixth novel, Storm and Grace, was published to critical acclaim in 2017. Her first novel, The Breaking, was shortlisted for the Stakis Prize for the Scottish Writer of the Year and longlisted for the Orange Prize. Other awards include an Arts Council of England Writers Award, the Wingate Scholarship, the Southern Arts Award, and nominations for the Edinburgh Fringe Critics' Awards, the Kibble Prize, and the West Australian Premier's Book Awards, as well as the Copyright Agency Author Fellowship for Fury.

Kathryn Heyman's several plays for BBC radio include Far Country and Moonlite's Boy, inspired by the life of bushranger Captain Moonlite. Two of her novels have been adapted for BBC radio: Keep Your Hands on the Wheel as a play and Captain Starlight's Apprentice as a five-part dramatic serial.

Heyman has held several writing fellowships, including the Scottish Arts Council Writing Fellowship at the University of Glasgow, and a Royal Literary Fund Writing Fellowship at Westminster College, Oxford. She taught creative writing for the University of Oxford and is now Conjoint Professor in Humanities at the University of Newcastle. In 2012, she founded the Australian Writers Mentoring Program.

Carrie Tiffany was born in West Yorkshire and grew up in Western Australia. She spent her early twenties working as a park ranger in Central Australia. Her first novel, Everyman's Rules for Scientific Living (2005), was shortlisted for the Orange Prize, the Miles Franklin Literary Award, the Guardian First Book Award and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, and won the Dobbie Award and the WA Premier's Award for Fiction. Mateship with Birds (2011) was also shortlisted for many awards and won the inaugural Stella Prize and the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction in the NSW Premier's Literary Awards. She lives and works in Melbourne.