Body and Mind

Carly-Jay Metcalfe is a Queensland-based writer. Her work has been published in Kill Your Darlings, The Guardian and TEXT Journal. She is a passionate advocate for organ donation and for more honest conversations around dying and death. Carly-Jay is an M.Phil. student in creative writing at the University of Queensland. 

Anna Jacobson is an award-winning writer, artist, and researcher from Meanjin (Brisbane). She has written four illustrated books. All Rage Blaze Light (forthcoming September 2025 with Upswell) was shortlisted in the 2023 Helen Anne Bell Poetry Bequest Award. Her memoir How to Knit a Human (NewSouth, 2024) was shortlisted in the Queensland Book of the Year category in the Queensland Literary Awards. Anna's poetry collection Anxious in a Sweet Store (Upswell, 2023) was the winner of an Australian Jewish Book Award, and Amnesia Findings (UQP, 2019) was winner of the Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize. Her chapbook is The Last Postman (Vagabond Press, deciBel series 3, 2018). She was the recipient of a Queensland Premier’s Young Publishers and Writers Award. Anna was a finalist in the Marie Ellis Prize for Drawing. She holds a Doctor of Philosophy in Creative Writing and was awarded a QUT Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Award. www.annajacobson.com.au

Matt has been an active swimmer since he was three years old, and competed for over 20 years in hundreds of state, national and international competitions, including five Paralympic Games.

He worked in the financial industry for over ten years in change management and currently works in the health sector. A graduate of the AICD Company Director’s Program Matt also holds multiple board, advisory and ambassadorial roles with sporting, community and humanitarian organisations.

In 2014 Matt was awarded the Order of Australia Medal for ‘Service to sport as a Gold Medallist at the London 2012 Paralympic Games’.

In 2015, he was named Athlete of the Year with a Disability at the New South Wales Sports Awards, and in 2018 he was named Swimming Australia’s Paralympic Program Swimmer of the Year.

His fifth Paralympics came to an exciting end when he joined teammates to win the gold medal in the men’s relay.

Going the Distance is Matt’s third book. He has written a children’s book, Brandon Dreams Big, and Keeping Your Head Above Water: Inspirational Insights from a Champion.

Sarah Klenbort grew up in a house in Atlanta with too many books and not enough cleaning products. She’s lived in Beijing, New York, Wales, Sydney and Brisbane. Sarah teaches creative writing at the University of Queensland and Memoir at Toowong Library and the Queensland Writers Centre. Her writing has appeared in The Guardian, Best Australian Stories, Overland, Island, Eureka Street, and other journals and anthologies in the UK, US and Australia.