Randa is an award-winning author, former lawyer, regular media commentator and doctoral candidate researching Islamophobia in Australia.

Randa is currently working on the film adaptation of her first novel, Does My Head Look Big in This? and is keen to use her intervention into popular culture to reshape dominant narratives around racism and multiculturalism.

Randa has written eight other books, including Ten Things I Hate About Me, Where the Streets Had a Name, Noah's Law and No Sex in the City. She lives in Sydney with her husband and three children.

Bernard Beckett is the author of eleven books, most of them for young adults. He has won numerous awards including the 2010 Prix Sorci res, the Esther Glen Award from the NZ Librarian's Association and the NZ Post Book Award for his novel Genesis. The Tunnel of Dreams is his first middle-grade novel. Bernard lives with his family in Wellington, New Zealand.

Cathy Cassidy is one of the UK's top-selling children's authors. She was an art teacher, a magazine editor and an agony aunt before becoming a full-time writer. She has worked at Shout magazine and previously at Jackie.

Cathy tours extensively around the UK - meeting over 10,000 young readers in 2012. She has twice won the prestigious 'Queen of Teen' award. Cathy lives in Merseyside with her husband, two dogs and a cat.

Felicity Castagna's first novel for Young Adults, The Incredible Here and Now, received the Prime Minister's Award for Literature, was named the IBBY Honour Book for Australia and was a finalist for the CBCA Book of the Year for Older Readers.

Her latest book, No More Boats, was a finalist in the Miles Franklin Award and published internationally. Felicity has written for the stage and radio and her essays frequently appear in magazines and journals.

She also loves creating cross-artform and collaborative work with other artists and has helped to make a lot of wild big things for many major festivals, art galleries and outdoor spaces. Outside of writing she teaches writing, talks about writing and helps to run a lot of storytelling, mentorship and art projects.

Queenie Chan was born in Hong Kong, and migrated to Australia when she was six years old. She has a Bachelor’s Degree in Information Systems, and her first published work was a 3-volume mystery-horror series called The Dreaming for LA-based manga publisher TOKYOPOP. To date, it has been translated into multiple languages.

Currently, she is working on her next project, a series of non-fiction children’s graphic novels called Women Who Were Kings. It will be a collections of biographies about the lives of famous historical queens from all over the world.

Kate Constable was born in Melbourne but spent much of her childhood in Papua New Guinea, without television but within reach of a library where she 'inhaled' stories. She studied Arts/Law at the University of Melbourne before working for a record company while she began her life as a writer.

Kate had stories published in Meanjin, Island and other literary magazines before realising she was actually a children's and YA author. Kate has written ten novels for young people, including the internationally-published Chanters of Tremaris series and the CBCA award-winning Crow Country. Kate lives in a northern suburb of Melbourne with her family, a bearded dragon, a rabbit and a dog.

Rachael Craw studied Classical Studies and Drama at the University of Canterbury, but became an English teacher after graduation.

Working with teenagers has given her a natural bent towards Young Adult fiction and a desire to present a feisty female protagonist in her writing.

Her debut novel, Spark, is the first in a series released with Walker Books Australia from 2014. Rachael was born and raised in Christchurch, New Zealand, and currently lives in Nelson with her husband and three daughters.

Alison Croggon is the acclaimed author of the high fantasy series The Books of Pellinor. She is also the author of Black Spring, a fantasy reworking of Wuthering Heights; and The River and the Book, which was endorsed by Amnesty International. Alison is an award-winning poet whose work has been published extensively, and she has written widely for theatre, with her plays and opera libretti having been produced all around Australia. Alison is also an editor and critic. She lives in Melbourne, Australia.

Ursula was born and grew up in Sydney in a family of writers, and wanted to be a writer from the age of six. She is now the author of over 50 books for children and young adults and her work is published all over the world.

She has won several national literary awards, including the Victorian, Queensland and South Australian State Awards for literature, and has also won the NSW Premier's Literary Award a record five times, more than any other writer in the history of the awards.

Internationally she has been nominated for both the Hans Christian Andersen award and the Astrid Lindgren prize. She has a PhD in English literature and currently lives in Sydney.

Mandy Hager has been awarded the Katherine Mansfield Menton fellowship for 2014, and she was the 2012 recipient of the New Zealand Society of Authors Beatson Fellowship.

She won the Esther Glen Award for Fiction for her YA novel Smashed and Best Young Adult Book in the NZ Post Book Awards 2010 for The Crossing. The Nature of Ash won the LIANZA YA Fiction Award in 2013 and was shortlisted for the 2013 NZ Post Children's Book Awards. In 2015 her novel Singing Home the Whale was awarded a Storylines Notable Book Award; was a finalist for the LIANZA YA Fiction award; it won the YA category of the New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults; and was named the 2015 Margaret Mahy Book of the Year.

Singing Home the Whale was described by the judges as a novel that "should be compulsory reading in any country that still hunts whales."Hager has a MA in Creative Writing from Victoria University and an Advanced Diploma in Applied Arts (Writing) from Whitireia Community Polytechnic, where she now works as a tutor and mentor. She lives with her partner on the Kapiti Coast. She has written novels for adults and young adults, short stories, scripts, and non-fiction resources for young people.

Catherine Johnson is an award-winning writer of Welsh/African Caribbean descent, now living in Hastings in East Sussex.

Her novels for children include Stella; The Dying Game; Arctic Hero, selected for Booked Up 2009; The Curious Tale of the Lady Caraboo; and A Nest of Vipers, shortlisted for the UKLA Award 2009.

She lectures in creative writing at London Metropolitan University and is a Trustee of The Reading Agency.

She works regularly with children and teachers in primary schools and libraries across the UK. This is the sequel to Sawbones, winner of the Historical Association's Young Quills Award for Historical Fiction.

Ambelin Kwaymullina loves reading sci-fi and fantasy books, and has wanted to write a novel since she was six years old.

She comes from the Palyku people of the Pilbara region of Western Australia. When not writing or reading she teaches law, illustrates picture books and hangs out with her dogs.

She has previously written a number of children’s books, both alone and with other members of her family.

Her first novel, The Tribe 1: The Interrogation of Ashala Wolf, was short-listed for the 2012 Aurealis Awards in both the Science Fiction and Young Adult Fiction categories.

Julia Lawrinson hails from the outer suburbs of Perth, and writes for children and young adults. Her first novel, Obsession, won the 2001 WA Premier's Prize for Young Adult Writing.

Since then she has published more than ten novels, including Bye, Beautiful, which was shortlisted for both the QLD and WA Premier's Awards and was a 2007 CBC Notable Book, the popular Chess Nuts, which was 2010 CBC Notable Book, and The Flyaway Girls.

Her day jobs have included weighbridge attendant, whopper maker, English lecturer, Sergeant-at-Arms and Usher of the Black Rod. She loves dog beaches, Jack Russells and New York, and has just completed a Bachelor of Laws with distinction.

Brigid Lowry began her writing career by self-publishing two dreadful poems when she was eight. She spent her twenties living in a Buddhist community, veered into performance poetry in her thirties, subsequently gained a masters degree in creative writing and wrote eight award-winning young adult books. She is a Zen student, a socialist, and a creative writing teacher.

Jaclyn Moriarty is the author of bestselling novels for young adults and adults, including the 'Ashbury-Brookfield' books. Her books have been named Best Books for Young Adults by the American Librarian Association and translated into several languages.

The first and second books in The Colours of Madeleine trilogy, A Corner of White and The Cracks in the Kingdom, won the NSW Premier's Literary Award and the Queensland Literary Award, and both were nominated for a number of other prizes.

The Cracks in the Kingdom won the Aurealis Award for Best Young Adult Novel. Jaclyn grew up in Sydney, lived in the US, England and Canada, and now lives in Sydney again.

Mal Peet's first novel, Keeper, won the Branford Boase Award and the Bronze Nestle Children's Book Prize; Tamar won the Carnegie Medal; and Exposure was the winner of the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize.

A writer and illustrator, Mal produced many books for children throughout his lifetime, most of them in collaboration with his wife, Elspeth Graham.

He also wrote a critically acclaimed adult novel, The Murdstone Trilogy.

James Roy was born in Trundle, western NSW. When he was ten months old his parents accepted a missionary appointment to the highlands of Papua New Guinea. A placement in Fiji followed some years later and, by the age of sixteen, James had spent more than half of his life living in the islands of the South Pacific. He attributes much of his early interest in books to the absence of TV, a wonderful library full of adventure books, and the opportunity to play as those characters in wild, adventuresome places.

James lives in the Blue Mountains with his family and writes both fiction and non-fiction for children and young adults. His books have won many awards and he travels throughout Australia talking about books and writing. He is an advocate for boys' literacy.

Dr Jared Thomas is a Nukunu person of the Southern Flinders Ranges, an Arts Development Officer at Arts, South Australia and an Indigenous Literacy Foundation ambassador.

Jared's play Flash Red Ford toured Uganda and Kenya in 1999 and his play Love, Land and Money featured during the 2002 Adelaide Fringe Festival.

Jared's young adult novel, Sweet Guy, was shortlisted for the 2009 South Australian People's Choice Awards for Literature and his children's book, Dallas Davis, the Scientist and the City Kids is published by the Oxford University Press Yarning Strong series.

His YA novels, Songs that Sounds Like Blood (2016) and Calypso Summer (2014) are published by Magabala Books. Jared's writing explores the power of belonging and culture. He lives in Adelaide with his partner and two daughters.

Fiona Wood has been writing television scripts for more than ten years.

Her second YA novel, Wildlife, won the 2014 CBCA Book of the Year, Older Readers.

Cloudwish is her third novel. She lives in Melbourne with her family.

Judith Ridge is internationally recognised as one of Australia's leading experts on literature for children and young adults.

In a career spanning more than 20 years, she has worked as a teacher, writer, critic and editor. Judith has taught children's literature at several universities and has been invited on numerous occasions to speak at conferences, festivals and seminars in Australia, Ireland, the UK and the USA.

She has been a judge on the NSW Premier's Literary Awards, is a Churchill Fellow and has an MA in children's literature. Judith is currently writing her PhD on Australian children's and young adult fantasy fiction. She lives in a dusty old house in South Windsor, NSW, with two mad cats and too many books.