Winners & Grinners: 2026 Queensland Literary Awards Panel

Zeno Sworder is an award-winning writer and artist who lives in Melbourne with his young family. After studying Chinese literature and migration law at university, he ended up as a dish washer. Later, he went on to work as a journalist, an English language teacher, a consular officer, an advocate for refugees and immigrants and a jewellery designer. He is a lover of all stationery but has a particular soft spot for pencils. Once I was a Giant is his third picture book. His previous books are This Small Blue Dot and My Strange Shrinking Parents.

Helena Pantsis (she/they) is an editor, writer and artist from Naarm, Australia with a fond appreciation for the weird, the dark, and the experimental. Her works have been published in Overland, Island, Meanjin, and Cordite, among others. She has won Going Down Swinging’s micro-microfiction challenge in 2021, has been shortlisted in WigLeaf’s top 50, nominated for Best American Short Stories and Best Short Fictions, and was the 2022 recipient of the H B Higgins Scholarship. In 2024, her debut short story collection GLUTT was published by Grattan Street Press.

Sita Walker is a high school English teacher, freelance writer and award-winning memoirist whose first book, The God of No Good (Ultimo Press, 2023) was met with critical acclaim. Sita has written for The Guardian and the Griffith Review. In a Common Hour (Ultimo Press, 2026) is her debut novel.

Claire Thomas is a writer from Naarm/Melbourne. Her first novel was Fugitive Blue, which won the Dobbie Literary Award for women writers, and was longlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award. Her second novel, The Performance, also longlisted for the Miles Franklin, was internationally published to critical acclaim, and shortlisted for the NSW Premier's Literary Award Christina Stead Prize for Fiction in 2022. Claire holds a PhD from the University of Melbourne and has worked as a mentor, lecturer, supervisor and teacher for many years. On Not Climbing Mountains was written with the support of a residency at the Fondation Jan Michalski in Montricher, Switzerland.

Micaela Sahhar is an Australian–Palestinian writer and educator living on Wurundjeri Country. Her essays, poetry and commentary have appeared in Cordite, Meanjin, Overland, Rabbit and Sydney Review of Books, among others. She is a Wheeler Centre Next Chapter Fellow (2021), a grant recipient from the Neilma Sidney Literary Travel Fund (2022), and was commended for the Peter Blazey Fellowship (2024). Her first book, Find Me at the Jaffa Gate: An Encyclopaedia of a Palestinian Family (NewSouth), won the 2026 Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Nonfiction and the 2026 NSW Literary Award (UTS Glenda Adams Award for New Writing), and was longlisted for the 2026 Stella Prize.

Julianne Negri is an award-winning writer and library worker living on the unceded land of the Wurundjeri people. Her debut children’s novel The Secret Library of Hummingbird House was a 2021 CBCA Notable and debut picture book, Almost a Fish, illustrated by Evie Barrow, won the 2024 Speech Pathology Book of the Year award. With over a decade of experience working in libraries, Julianne is a passionate advocate for children’s literature. She has followed varied creative pursuits as a musician, film maker, television host, eco-crafter and has five children. 

Lenora Thaker is a proud Meriam and Wagedagam woman born and raised on Gimuy-Walubarra Yidinji country in Far North Queensland. She is a descendant of the Torres Strait Islanders of Cairns Malaytown (a swampland shantytown that existed from the late 1800s to the early 1950s), who are the inspiration for this story. Lenora Thaker received the Boundless Mentorship for The Pearl of Tagai Town.

Darby Jones is the Editorial Assistant at Griffith Review and a bookseller at Cursive Knives. He is an alumnus of the black&write! Indigenous Writing and Editing Project and the Open Book Internship and has dedicated his career to diversifying the publishing industry.