Writing the Landscape

Inga Simpson is the author of Willowman, The Last Woman in the World, Mr Wigg, Nest, Where the Trees Were, as well as Understory: my life with trees and, for children, The Book of Australian Trees, illustrated by Alicia Rogerson. Inga’s novels have been short and longlisted for numerous awards, including the Miles Franklin and Stella Prize, while Understory was shortlisted for the Adelaide Writers Week award for nonfiction. Inga has PhDs in creative writing and English literature, with her most recent thesis exploring the history of Australian nature writing. Her short stories and essays have been published in Wonderground, Chicago Quarterly Review, Griffith Review, Openbook, Review of Australian Fiction, Clues, Writing Queensland, and The Dictionary of Literary Biography.

Robbie Arnott’s acclaimed debut, Flames (2018), won a Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Novelist award and a Tasmanian Premier’s Literary Prize, and was shortlisted for a Victorian Premier’s Literary Award, a New South Wales Premier’s Literary Award, a Queensland Literary Award, the Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction and the Not the Booker Prize. His follow-up, The Rain Heron (2020), won the Age Book of the Year award, and was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award, the ALS Gold Medal, the Voss Literary Prize and an Adelaide Festival Award. His latest novel is Limberlost. He lives in Hobart. 

Claire G. Coleman is a Wirlomin Noongar woman whose ancestral country is on the south coast of Western Australia. Born in Perth she has spent most of her life in Naarm (Melbourne) or on the road. She has written 3 novels Terra Nullius (2019), The Old Lie (2019), and Enclave and a non-fiction book Lies Damned Lies: A personal exploration of the the impact of colonisation (2021). Her art criticism has been published in Spectrum, Artlink and Art Collector and in exhibition catalogues for NGV, AGSA and NGA and others. Her conceptual/video work Refugium won the Incinerator Art Award in 2021 and she will feature in a number of exhibitions in 2022. She writes novels, poetry, short-fiction, drama and essay and has featured in the Saturday Paper, the Guardian, Meanjin, Australian Poetry and many others. Her short fiction and poetry has been published in multiple anthologies.

Sally Piper is the author of three novels. Her most recent Bone Memories was a finalist in the 2023 Queensland Literary Awards for a Work of State Significance, the Courier Mail People’s Choice Queensland Book of the Year Award and was longlisted for the 2023 Dublin Literary Award and a Davitt Award. Her short fiction and non-fiction have appeared in various publications to include Griffith Review, The Saturday Paper, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Weekend Australian.