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Kristina Olsson is an award-winning writer of fiction, non-fiction and journalism. Her 2009 novel The China Garden won the Barbara Jefferis Award and was shortlisted for the Kibble Prize. Her 2013 memoir, Boy, Lost, garnered multiple awards including the Queensland, New South Wales and West Australian Premiers awards for non-fiction and the Kibble Prize. Her most recent novel, Shell, launched the legendary Scribner Australia literary imprint and was shortlisted in several major literary awards.

Christos Tsiolkas is the author of seven novels, including Loaded, which was made into the feature film Head-On, The Jesus Man and Dead Europe, which won the 2006 Age Fiction Prize and the 2006 Melbourne Best Writing Award, as well as being made into a feature film. His fourth novel, the international bestseller The Slap, won Overall Best Book in the Commonwealth Writers' Prize 2009, was shortlisted for the 2009 Miles Franklin Literary Award, longlisted for the 2010 Man Booker Prize and won the Australian Literary Society Gold, as well as the 2009 Australian Booksellers Association and Australian Book Industry Awards Books of the Year.

Christos's fifth novel Barracuda was shortlisted for the ALS Gold Medal and the inaugural Voss Literary Prize. The Slap and Barracuda were both adapted into celebrated television series. Christos's acclaimed collection of short stories, Merciless Gods, was published in 2014 and his critical literary study On Patrick White came out in 2018. His sixth novel, Damascus, was published in 2019 and won the 2019 Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Fiction. He is also a playwright, essayist and screen writer. He lives in Melbourne.