Claire McKenna is a speculative fiction writer from Melbourne, Australia. Claire grew up in Auckland, New Zealand and came to Australia when she was young. Her stories decided to come with her.

A longtime writer of short fiction with a background in environmental sciences, Monstrous Heart is Claire's debut novel.

Marlee Jane Ward is a writer, reader and weirdo from Melbourne, Australia.

In 2014 she attended the Clarion West Writers Workshop and took second place in the Katharine Susannah Prichard Speculative Fiction awards.

She has work coming out all over the place in 2015, so stay tuned. She digs cats, babes and food, in that precise order.

Sean Williams is a multi-award-winning, #1 New York Times best-selling author for readers of all ages. With over four million published words, in the form of series, novels, short stories and poems that have been translated into multiple languages for readers around the world, he has worked with visual artists, dramaturges, composers and other writers on collaborative works that include stories set in the Star Wars and Doctor Who universes, original series created with Garth Nix, and a science-fiction musical performed at the National Museum in Canberra.

In 2017, he was the recipient of the Australian Antarctica Division's annual Arts Fellowship. His most recent novels Impossible Music and Her Perilous Mansion were nominated for the Ethel Turner Prize for Young People's Literature and the Patricia Wrightson Prize for Children's Literature respectively. Both are Children's Book Council of Australia Notable Books. As well as being a senior lecturer at Flinders University, he writes articles about creative writing; composes music that has been released internationally and commissioned for exhibitions, live performances, and the stage; and cooks a mean Brussels sprout.

CRAIG CORMICK is an award-winning author and science communicator.

Cormick was a former Chair of the ACT Writers Centre and has taught creative writing at both university and community level.

Angela Slatter is the award-winning author of eight short story collections, including A Feast of Sorrows: Stories, Sourdough and Other Stories, The Bitterwood Bible and Other Recountings, and Winter Children and Other Chilling Tales.

She has won the World Fantasy Award, the British Fantasy Award and five Aurealis Awards. Her short stories have appeared widely, including in annual British, Australian and North American Best Of anthologies, and her work has been translated into Spanish, Russian, Polish, Romanian, and Japanese.

Vigil was her first solo novel, and the sequel Corpselight is due out in July 2017. Angela lives in Brisbane, Australia.

Thoraiya Dyer is a four-time Aurealis Award–winning, four-time Ditmar Award–winning Australian writer based in Katoomba, New South Wales, and is the author of the Titan's Forest series, starting with Crossroads of Canopy.