Embracing Complexity

Lech Blaine is a writer from country Queensland. He is the author of the memoir Car Crash and the Quarterly Essay Top Blokes: The Larrikin Myth, Class and Power. Lech regularly contributes essays to The Monthly.

Jess Hill is a Walkley award-winning journalist who specialises in reporting on coercive control and gendered violence. Prior to this, she was a Middle East correspondent, and worked as both a producer and reporter for various current affairs programs across the ABC. In 2019, she published her first book, See What You Made Me Do, about the phenomenon of domestic abuse in Australia. It was awarded the 2020 Stella Prize, has been shortlisted for several others, including the Walkley Book Award and the Prime Minister's Literary Award, and has been adapted into a television series for SBS. Recently, Jess has also produced an audio documentary series on coercive control called 'The Trap', and a Quarterly Essay on #MeToo in Australia, 'The Reckoning'.

Lana Lopesi is an author, art critic, editor and multidisciplinary researcher based in Tāmaki Makaurau. Since 2012 Lana has published extensively on New Zealand art and culture in local and international publications including Metro magazine, the Pantograph Punch, Bulletin, Art New Zealand, the Spinoff, Paperboy, among many others. Her writing has also been included in books such as Routledge Companion to Art in the Public Realm, Crafting Aotearoa (Te Papa Press) and Say Something: Jacqueline Fahey (Christchurch Art Gallery). In 2018 Lana published her debut book False Divides (BWB Texts) and in 2019 she co-edited the book Transits and Returns (Vancouver Art Gallery; Institute of Modern Art).

Ashley Hay is an award-winning novelist and essayist whose work includes The Railwayman’s Wife, A Hundred Small Lessons and Gum: The Story of Eucalypts and Their Champions. A former editor of Griffith Review, she also works as a mentor and facilitator, and as editorial consultant for the Climate Justice Observatory.