ANNA BARNES is an award-winning playwright, screenwriter and author. Her writing has been published in Kill Your Darlings, Killings, The Lifted Brow and The Age. Her book, Girl! The Ultimate Guide To Being You (Penguin 2012), was named one of the 2013 Eva Pownall Notable Books by the Children’s Book Council of Australia. Her plays and monologues have been performed around Australia. In 2013, her play MinusOneSister won the Sydney Theatre Company’s Patrick White Playwright’s Award. MinusOneSister opened at Griffin Theatre in October 2015, produced by Stories Like These. In 2017, she won an AWGIE for the geolocative story app Ghosts of Bileola. Her play Lethal Indifference opened at the Sydney Theatre Company in February 2018 and was subsequently highly commended by Victoria Premier’s Literary Awards. In 2022, she created the AACTA and Logie nominated TV drama Safe Home for SBS. Her Safe Home pilot script won the Betty Roland Prize for Scriptwriting at the 2024 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards. She’s also written for a number of TV shows including the second series of the critically acclaimed Binge series The Twelve and the Rose D’Or winning vertical series Content for ABC TV. Content garnered her an AWGIE Award win for Best Web Series and nominations for several other awards, including an International Emmy for Best Short-Form, and an AACTA for Best Online Drama or Comedy.

VAN BADHAM is the award-winning writer of more than 30 internationally-produced plays for stage and radio. Her first novel, Burnt Snow, was released in Australia in September 2010. She is a columnist for The Guardian, Australia and a regular panellist on ABC Television’s The Drum. Badham has had plays and musical theatre staged at six Edinburgh Festivals, in London at venues including the Royal Court Theatre, the Bush (for Paines Plough), the Battersea Arts Centre and Theatre503 and on the UK touring circuit. Her theatre commissioners in Australia include MTC, Malthouse, Griffin, Merrigong, HotHouse, Terrapin and the Tasmanian Theatre Company. Her plays have had professional productions across America, Canada, Iceland, Germany, Switzerland and Austria and her international theatre commissions include Swamplands for the Wilma Theater in Philadelphia, The Story of D-Star K for the Bern Stadttheater in Switzerland and Empire of the Rats for Luxi Ltd, UK. Badham’s radio commissions have been for the BBC World Service, Radio 4, and Radio 3 and her first screenplay, We Come Home, was developed with a grant from the Australian Writers’ Guild. Her Australian theatre productions include The Bloody Chamber for Malthouse, The Bull, the Moon and the Coronet of Stars for Griffin, Merrigong and Hothouse, Big Baby for Terrapin and Late Night Story at the Adelaide Fringe. Badham is a former Literary Manager of the Finborough Theatre London (2009-2011) and was Artistic Associate at the Malthouse Melbourne (2011-2013) before moving to her present position at the Guardian.

PATRICIA CORNELIUS is a founding member of Melbourne Workers Theatre. Patricia has a fierce commitment to class and her work often examines the lives of the marginalized. She’s a playwright, novelist and film writer. Cornelius is the recipient of the Windham-Campbell Literature Prize, the Mona Brand Award and the 2019 Green Room award for Life Achievement. Her prizes for stage work include the 2011 Victorian and NSW Premiers’ Literary Awards, the Patrick White Playwright’s Award, the Richard Wherrett Prize, the Wal Cherry Award and numerous AWGIES for stage, community theatre, theatre for young people. She was awarded the Australian Writers Foundation Playwriting Award in 2015 as well as the Patrick White Fellowship (2012), and a Fellowship from the Australia Council’s Theatre Board. Patricia has won the AWGIE Major Award three times. She has written over 35 plays including: TRUTH, My Sister Jill, Bad Boy, Runt, Anthem, In the Club, Shit, Big Heart, Savages, Do not go gentle…, Slut, Love and The Call. Patricia wrote the adaption of SHIT for film and co-wrote the feature film adaptation Blessed, Patricia’s novel, My Sister Jill (Random House) was published in 2002.