Alex Skovron is the author of seven collections of poetry, a prose novella and a book of short stories. He was born in Poland, lived briefly in Israel, and migrated to Australia as a boy. His most recent collection is Letters from the Periphery; his earlier volume of new and selected poems, Towards the Equator,...

Alma Zygier is bewitching and idiosyncratic. The Melbourne born jazz and blues performer brings grit and grime to her vocals. Playful and peculiar, Alma portrays her power and fragility simultaneously at every turn bringing an emotional maturity to her performance that belies her years.

Anna Jacobson is an award-winning writer and artist from Meanjin (Brisbane). She has written and illustrated three books: a memoir – How to Knit a Human (NewSouth, 2024); and the poetry collections Anxious in a Sweet Store (Upswell, 2023) and Amnesia Findings (UQP, 2019). In 2020 Anna won the Nillumbik Prize for Contemporary Writing and...

Anne Manne is an Australian writer, essayist and social philosopher. A former columnist for The Australian and The Age, she has written many essays about contemporary culture, especially for The Monthly magazine. Her books include Motherhood, So This Is Life, The Life of I and a Quarterly Essay, ‘Love and Money: The Family and the...

Arnold Zable is an acclaimed writer, novelist, much-loved storyteller, and recipient of an Australia Council Award for Lifetime Achievement in Literature. His books include Jewels and Ashes, Cafe Scheherazade, The Fig Tree, Scraps of Heaven, Sea of Many Returns, Violin Lessons, The Fighter, The Watermill, and forthcoming, The Glass Horse of Venice, beautifully illustrated by...

Barbara Kamler is a Melbourne-based poet and university educator. After publishing nine academic books and countless research essays, her heart turned to poetry. Leaving New Jersey (2016) is a memoir told in prose poetry. Love, regardless (2022), a gallery of fourteen long-love portraits, is based on interviews but told in syllabic verse. Sophie Stories (2024),...

Bram Presser is a semi-reformed punk rocker, recovering academic and lapsed lawyer. His novel, The Book of Dirt, won the National Jewish Book Award for Debut Fiction (USA), the Voss Prize and three categories at the NSW Premiers Literary Awards. In his spare time, Bram reads, reviews, blogs and judges literary prizes.

Dassi Erlich is a high-profile lobbyist, justice campaigner and advocate for sexual abuse survivors. Given the hardships she has faced, her trajectory is extraordinary. In Bad Faith is Dassi’s powerful memoir.

David Slucki is the Loti Smorgon Associate Professor in Contemporary Jewish Life and Culture, and the Director of the Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation at Monash University. He is the author of Sing This at My Funeral: A Memoir of Fathers and Sons (2019), and The International Jewish Labor Bund after 1945: Towards a Global...

Debbie Lee is Festival Director, Melbourne Jewish Book Week. She has worked in the publishing industry for over 30 years, primarily with academic publishers such as Cambridge University Press, UNSW Press and Elsevier. More recently she has been instrumental in building the profile of ‘indie authors’, and has convened the Indie Publishing Forum and the...

Deborah Conway & Willy Zygier have been musicians for more than 40 years, 33 of them collaborating together. During these decades they have released 10 albums, played a countless number of live shows from stadiums to lounge rooms; recorded a lot of songs, some of which have raised eyebrows, some of which have been played...

Diane Armstrong is a child Holocaust survivor from Poland who arrived in Australia with her parents in 1948. She is an award-winning journalist and best-selling author. Her first book, Mosaic, was short-listed for several major Australian literary awards. The Voyage of their Life was short-listed for the NSW Premier’s Award. Her first novel, Winter Journey,...

Dr Breann Fallon has been working in the cultural sector, educating on the Holocaust and other human rights issues since 2013. The granddaughter of non-Jewish survivors of Nazi persecution, Breann is focussed on ensuring we communicate the past to ensure a better present and future for all. As Head of Programming and Exhibitions, Breann leads...

Eleanor Reissa is a storyteller in English and Yiddish – her first language. She is an award- winning director and playwright, actress, singer, translator, choreographer, and author. She was last seen on Broadway in ‘Indecent’, plays the matriarch in ‘The Zweiflers’, winner of the Cannes TV Series Award 2024, and has an anthology, The Last...

Elise Esther Hearst is an award-winning Melbourne-based playwright, author and performer, working and living on Boon Wurrung country. Her debut novel, One Day We’re All Going to Die, was published by Harper Collins in 2023 and was shortlisted for The Age Book of the Year Award 2024. Her second novel will be published in 2025....

Elissa Goldstein is a writer, editor and collector of library memberships (her most recent acquisition is a Library of Congress researcher card). She has an MFA in creative writing from Brooklyn College and previously worked at the ABC and Tablet. She is currently a digital producer at The Age.

Elizabeth Finkel is a biochemist who switched to journalism. She co-founded Cosmos Magazine, serving as Editor in Chief from 2013 to 2018. She authored ‘Stem Cells which won the Queensland premier’s Literary award and ‘The Genome Generation’. In 2019 she received the Medal of the Australian Society for Medical Research and an honorary doctorate from Monash University She serves as...

Erica Frydenberg AM (MA, Dip Ed, Dip Clin Psych, PhD, Grad GAICD) is a clinical, organisational, and educational psychologist and Principal Research Fellow (Honorary) in psychology at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education. She has authored over 150 academic journal articles and chapters, developed programs, and published books on coping, resilience, parenting, adolescent coping, and...

Eva Collins is a writer and photographer. Her memoir, Ask No Questions, was shortlisted for the 2023 CBCA Book of the Year Awards, the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards and the Mary Gilmore Award. Her poems appeared in the Best Australian Poems, Quadrant, Southerly, Westerly, Cordite Review and the New Castle Poetry Prize Anthology.

Evelyn Krape is artistic Director of the Kadimah Yiddish Theatre. In 2023 she completed a highly successful season of Bloom and also A Very Jewish Christmas Carol for the Melbourne Theatre Company. In March this year, Evelyn performed in the award-winning production of Yentl at the Malthouse Theatre, and will be reprising her role at the Sydney...

Foong Ling Kong is Publisher at Melbourne University Publishing. Over a two-decade career, she has worked in-house at Penguin, Hardie Grant and Allen & Unwin. She was Chair of the Feminist Writers Festival, on the boards of the Stella Prize and Overland, and managing editor of Anne Summers Reports. She spent the last seven years...

Gary is the Executive Director of Kadimah Yiddish Theatre and a freelance Director and Playwright. He has directed the Australian premieres and National tours of several large-scale commercial shows, as well as classic texts, contemporary plays, new Australian scripts, and devised projects. His work encompasses large scale commercial plays and musicals, main-stage works, independent shows and self...

Hila Ben Gera is a professionally trained Theatre-maker (Actress, Director, Playwright) and children’s storyteller since 2007. She graduated from Yoram Levinstein’s Performing Arts Institute in Tel Aviv and completed the Herbert Berghof Studio – Playwriting and Directing training in NYC. Her diverse artistic practice has led to original plays, theatre productions, and festivals in NYC,...

Hila Blum lives in Jerusalem where she was born and raised. In her youth she also lived in Hawaii for two years. She began her professional career as a journalist, writing feature articles, profiles, personal columns and book reviews. Hila has been a literary editor for the past 27 years. Her second novel, How to...

Hilton Koppe is a writer, educator, podcaster and doctor living on Bundjalung Land. Hilton facilitates reflective writing workshops for doctors and other health professionals with the goal of deepening their compassion, overcoming professional isolation and reducing risk of burnout. The workshops have been adapted for people living with chronic and mental illnesses, as well as...

Idan Ben Barak writes science books, usually for children; they’ve been translated into over twenty languages and won a few awards. He lives in Melbourne with his wife and their two boys. Sometimes, after they go to bed, he plays his guitar a bit. He has degrees in microbiology and in the history and philosophy of science, a diploma...

After growing up in Hong Kong, Isabelle Oderberg went to university in Melbourne. She has worked as a journalist for two decades in newswires across Europe, Asia and Australia, where she was the country’s first social media editor for Melbourne’s Herald Sun. Her work has appeared in The Age/SMH, Guardian, ABC, Meanjin and elsewhere. She...

James Button was a feature writer, deputy editor, and Europe correspondent for The Age and Sydney Morning Herald. In 2009-2010, in the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, he wrote speeches for Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, detailed in his book Speechless: A Year in My Father’s Business. He authored Comeback: The Fall and Rise of...

Jan Grabowski is a Polish-Canadian professor of history at the University of Ottawa, specializing in Jewish–Polish relations in German-occupied Poland during World War II and the Holocaust in Poland. Co-founder in 2003 of the Polish Center for Holocaust Research, in Warsaw, Poland, Grabowski is best known for his book Hunt for the Jews: Betrayal and...

Jana Firestone is a therapist with over 17 years’ experience working in grief and trauma and with families and young people. Jana is the host and executive producer of The Curious Life Podcast and The Days That Follow and is author of two books – Plot Twist: a personal guide to surviving life’s unexpected curveballs,...

Dr Joe Reich is the author of five novels and a cowritten biography. His most recent books are historical fiction. In Ein Stein (2021) the elderly unreliable protagonist has lived as a holocaust survivor for many years. Beyond Berggasse (2023) takes us back to the glittering Vienna of the turn of the last century through...

Jonathan Pearlman is the editor of The Jewish Quarterly. He is also editor of Australian Foreign Affairs and world editor of The Saturday Paper. He previously worked at The Sydney Morning Herald, covering foreign affairs and politics, and as a correspondent in the Middle East. His work has appeared in numerous publications, including The Diplomat,...

Jonathan Seidler is an author, creative director and music critic. His work is published frequently in The Guardian, The Age and The Australian. Jonathan launched two nationally syndicated fiction series for Broadsheet and edited an Unyoked nature writing anthology. His memoir, It’s A Shame About Ray, was adapted for an immersive live performance for SWF...

Josh Szeps is one of Australia’s most influential, innovative interviewers. As a founding host of HuffPost Live in New York, he interviewed the world’s biggest names and was a regular on NBC’s TODAY Show. In Australia, he anchored the ABC’s weekend breakfast television show and, on ABC Radio, Afternoons with Josh Szeps. He left the...

Julia Levitina grew up in Moscow with her Ukrainian Jewish mother and grandmother, who were both Holocaust survivors. She studied design and worked as a theatre designer before immigrating to Australia in 1991 with two children and $200 to her name. Julia completed a Masters of Theatre Design at University of Technology, Sydney. While teaching...

Julie Szego is an independent journalist who writes on Substack, a self-publishing platform.A former lawyer, she has spent much of her 25-year journalism career writing for The Age as a senior writer, leader writer and until last year as a regular columnist.

Katia Ariel is an author, book editor and educator from Melbourne/Naarm. She was born in Odesa, Ukraine. Katia has been published in a variety of literary journals, including Womankind, Archer and Antithesis. Her memoir, The Swift Dark Tide, was shortlisted for the 2024 Stella Prize. Her second book, Ferryman: The Life and Deathwork of Ephraim Finch, is forthcoming with...

Kerri Sackville is an Australian author, columnist, and social commentator. A long-time contributor to the Sydney Morning Herald, Melbourne Age and Sunday Life Magazine, Kerri’s columns are regularly amongst the most widely read across the sites. Kerri has written five works of non-fiction and contributed to three anthologies. Her latest book is The Secret Life...

Krystyna Duszniak is the owner of Lost Histories, a Polish-Jewish research bureau. She has an MA in History from the University of Melbourne, where she was a student of Mark Baker’s and later went on to be his research assistant for The Fiftieth Gate. Lost Histories was born thanks to Mark sending everyone Krystyna’s way...

Leah Kaminsky is a physician and award-winning writer. Her debut novel, The Waiting Room, won the Voss Literary Prize. The Hollow Bones won both the Literary Fiction and Historical Fiction categories of the 2019 International Book Awards, and the 2019 American Book Fest’s Best Book Award for Literary Fiction. She is the author of ten...

Dr Lee Kofman is the author of six books, including a book on writing, The Writer Laid Bare (Ventura Press, 2022), memoirs Imperfect (Affirm Press, 2019), which was shortlisted for Nib Literary Award, and The Dangerous Bride (Melbourne University Press, 2014). She is the co-editor of Rebellious Daughters (Ventura Press, 2016) and editor of Split...

Linda Royal was born in Sydney. Her family received life-saving transit visas from Chiune Sugihara in 1940, allowing them to escape the Holocaust – and find a permanent, safe home in Australia in 1941. The remainder of her family, numbering in the hundreds, were murdered. Her debut novel, The Star on the Grave, historical fiction...

Louise Helfgott is an award-winning writer with a PhD in Creative Writing from Edith Cowan University. Recent credits include Thistledown Seed, published July 2022 by Brandl and Schlesinger and shortlisted Dorothy Hewett Awards, 2018, WA Premier’s Book Awards 2023; Potchnagoola, commissioned and staged by the Katharine Susannah Prichard Centre, October 2019; Light of her Eye...

Lucy Adlington is a writer and social historian, specialising in women’s history in the 1940s. Her recent history, The Dressmakers of Auschwitz – The True Story of the Women Who Sewed to Survive was a New York Times bestseller and has been translated into 22 languages. Her new Holocaust history Four Red Sweaters will be published in March 2025. Lucy...

Magdalena Ball is a writer, reviewer, moderator, interviewer, Vice President of Flying Island, and Managing Editor of Compulsive Reader. Her writing has appeared in a wide range of journals and anthologies, and has won many awards. She is the author of several novels and poetry books, most recently, Bobish, a verse-memoir of her great-grandmother Rebecca...

Manny Waks is Host of PTSD Nation, a podcast series addressing the issues associated with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Manny has held numerous senior leadership positions in the Jewish community in Australia and globally. As a survivor of child sexual abuse, Manny founded organisations to deal with this issue, most notably VoiCSA. Manny is a former...

Marina Benjamin’s books include the memoirs Last Days in Babylon (longlisted for the Wingate Prize), The Middlepause (finalist for the Art Foundation’s Creative Non-fiction Award) and Insomnia. Her essays have appeared in Granta, Aeon and the Paris Review and her journalism is published in Prospect, The Guardian, The New Statesman and New York Times. Her...

Marina Kamenev is the former deputy arts editor of the Moscow Times and has been widely published in the Atlantic, Time, Sunday Life, The Monthly and Marie Claire, often writing about family. Kin: Family in the 21st Century is publsihed by UNSW Press. She lives in Sydney and is the mother of two.

Michael Gawenda is one of Australia’s best-known journalists and authors. In a journalism career spanning four decades, Michael has been a political reporter, a foreign correspondent based in London and in Washington, a columnist, a feature writer and an editor. He has won numerous journalism awards including three Walkley awards, the Australian equivalent of the...

Michael Visontay is the Commissioning Editor of The Jewish Independent and was Editor-in-Chief from 2017-22. With 40 years of experience as a journalist, editor, author, and lecturer, he has held roles including Assistant Editor of the Sydney Morning Herald, Deputy Editor of the Sun-Herald, and columnist for The Australian Jewish News. Michael has created and...

Michelle Lesh is a Senior Fellow at Melbourne Law School. She worked at the United Nations as an international lawyer, and for many years in Israel as a legal advisor at governmental, inter-governmental and non-governmental levels. She is on the board of Australian Red Cross International Humanitarian Law Advisory Committee, on the International Council of...

Michelle has spent the last three years researching how we inherit a genetic blueprint from our family of origin, influencing our decisions, choices, and legacy. Her memoir, Hush, decodes these links, illustrating how history, culture, beliefs, and genetics intersect to shape lives through unhealed inherited family trauma. Michelle is a published TEDx speaker with over...

Nadine J. Cohen is a Sydney-based writer working across media, screen, and literature with bylines in The Guardian, The Saturday Paper, SMH/Age, ABC, Harper’s Bazaar, and more. Her debut novel, Everyone and Everything, was released in 2023 to critical acclaim, nominated for two Australian Book industry Awards and named Booktopia’s debut release of the year....

Professor Rebecca Margolis is the Pratt Foundation Chair of Jewish Civilisation at Monash University. Her scholarship focusses on Yiddish linguistic continuity and cultural production to include education, publication, performance, and cinema in Canada has appeared in Jewish Roots, Canadian Soil: Yiddish Culture in Montreal, 1905-1945 and Yiddish Lives On: Strategies of Language Transmission. Her latest...

Rachelle Unreich has been a journalist for 38 years, contributing to publications including The Age, Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian and Harper’s Bazaar. Her first book, A Brilliant Life, tells the story of her mother Mira, a Holocaust survivor, and has been published in Australia, NZ, the US, UK, Canada and South Africa. It was...

Raimond Gaita is Emeritus Professor of Moral Philosophy at King’s College London and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.The University of Antwerp awarded him the degree of Doctor Honoris Causa “for his exceptional contribution to contemporary moral philosophy and for his singular contribution the role of the intellectual in today’s academic world”....

Ramona Koval is a writer and journalist. Her most recent books include A Letter to Layla: Travels to our deep past and near future (Text, 2020), Bloodhound: Searching for my father (Text, 2015). Her essay ‘Goodbye and Good Luck’ appeared in the collection Split: True Stories of Leaving, Loss and New Beginnings, Edited by Lee...

Ros Ben-Moshe is a Laughter, Wellbeing and Positivity author and Adjunct lecturer at the School of Public Health and Psychology at La Trobe University, where she coordinates the Laughter, Resilience and Wellbeing online short course for professionals. Ros is author of the international bestseller The Laughter Effect – How to Build Joy,...

Roz Bellamy is a writer and researcher based in Melbourne. Roz’s first book, Mood: A Memoir of Love, Identity and Mental Health, published by Wakefield Press in 2023, explores the intersections of mental illness, Jewish and queer identity, and intergenerational trauma. In 2022, Roz completed a PhD exploring the impacts of engaging in life writing...

Sandra Goldbloom Zurbo is the author of My Father’s Shadow (Monash University Publishing, 2023). She grew up in St Kilda and spent time in New York City. Her short stories and poems have been published in Griffith Review and Westerly, among others. Her novel, The Book of Rachel, was published by Allen & Unwin and later translated into German. Sandra’s business,...

Sarah Krasnostein is a multi-award winning writer and critic. She is the best-selling author of The Trauma Cleaner, The Believer, the Quarterly Essay, ‘Not Waving, Drowning‘ and ‘On Peter Carey‘. She holds a doctorate in criminal law and is admitted to legal practice in Australia and America. Her awards include the...

Shoshy Rockman began to write three years ago — an exponential leap into work that is edgy, raw and humourful. A feminist humanist slant. A scientific twist. A steely desire. To bridge gulfs. Brave wolves and ride dragons bareback. National and international awards trail. In the wake. Of her words.

Dr Steven Cooke is the CEO of the Melbourne Holocaust Museum. He has over 30 years’ experience in the cultural heritage sector across both museums and academia, and has published extensively on both the historical evolution of Holocaust museums and memorials, and new approaches to sharing Holocaust survivor testimony. His work has led the Australian...

Tali Lavi is a writer, critic and public interviewer whose work has appeared in The Jewish Quarterly, The Saturday Paper, Australian Book Review and other publications. Her essay ‘Counting’ was published in Marina Benjamin’s Garden Among Fires: A Lockdown Anthology. She has an MA in Creative Writing (RMIT University), has written a play (Tales of...

Tami is a Sydney-based author with background in theatre, comedy and spoken word poetry. She facilitates creative writing workshops for school students and contributes humorous op- eds for online and print magazines. Tami wrote the best-selling picture book Tiny Tradies and her debut middle grade novel So That Happened … But Maybe You Already Knew...

Tess Scholfield-Peters is a Sydney–Eora based writer and academic currently based at the University of Technology Sydney where she teaches creative writing. Tess began her writing career in community journalism and has since completed her doctorate, for which she wrote her first book Dear Mutzi (NLA Publishing), a hybrid narrative non–fiction about her grandfather’s migration...