Empathy

Laura Jean McKay is the author of The Animals in That Country (Scribe 2020) — winner of the prestigious Arthur C Clarke Award, The Victorian Prize for Literature, the ABIA Small Publishers Adult Book of the Year and co-winner of the Aurealis Award for Best Science Fiction Novel 2021. Laura is also the author of Holiday in Cambodia (Black Inc., 2013). Her latest collection is Gunflower (Scribe 2023).

Krys Lee is the author of the story collection Drifting House and the novel How I Became a North Korean, and the translator of the novel I Hear Your Voice and the story collection Diary of a Murderer by Young-ha Kim. She is the recipient of the Rome Prize in Literature and the Story Prize Spotlight Award, a Granta New Voices pick, and was a finalist for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and the BBC International Story Prize. She teaches creative writing at Yonsei University, Underwood International College, in Seoul.

Fiona Kelly McGregor’s most recent novel Iris, is shortlisted for the NSW Premiers Awards and was longlisted for the Stella Prize. Previously, Indelible ink won Age Book of the Year and was published in French by Actes-Sud. Non fiction includes essay collection Buried not dead, shortlisted for the VPLA, genre-busting photoessay A novel idea, Strange museums, a travel memoir of a performance art tour through Poland, and the underground classic chemical palace. Short story collection Suck my toes/Dirt won the Steele Rudd Award. McGregor has decades’ experience as a performance artist as well as curator of events, and writes for The Saturday Paper, Sydney Review of Books, Art Monthly and more.

Fiona McFarlane is the author of the novel The Night Guest, which was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award, and the collection of short stories The High Places, which won the International Dylan Thomas Prize. Her second novel, The Sun Walks Down, is set in the Flinders Ranges. Fiona teaches fiction at the University of California, Berkeley. 

Melanie is a writer, editor and researcher. Her debut novel Meet Me at Lennon's (UQP) won the 2018 QLA's Glendower Award for an Emerging Writer. Her work has been published in Kill Your Darlings, Griffith Review, Arena Magazine, Overland, Hecate, TEXT and elsewhere. She is a winner of the 2022 Griffith Review Emerging Voices competition and the 2024 winner of the UQ Creative Writing Fellowship. She teaches at the University of Queensland.