HILARY BELL is a playwright, librettist and lyricist. Notable works include Wolf Lullaby, Splinter, Summer of Harold and musical adaptation Picnic at Hanging Rock (composer Greta Gertler Gold). She’s been produced nationally by the Sydney Theatre Company, Ensemble, Belvoir, Griffin, City Recital Hall, Black Swan, Deckchair, La Boite, NORPA, National Theatre of Parramatta, Sydney Opera House, Arts Centre Melbourne, Vitalstatistix and Darlinghurst Theatre Company. Internationally her work’s been produced by Atlantic and Steppenwolf (USA), London’s National and the Edinburgh Fringe. Awards include the inaugural Philip Parsons Young Playwrights Award, Jill Blewitt Award, Bug’n’Bub and Eric Kocher Award (both USA), Aurealis Fiction, Inscription, three AWGIEs, a Helpmann and the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize shortlist. She was the 2003-04 Tennessee Williams Fellow in Creative Writing at the University of the South in Tennessee, and 2013’s Patrick White Playwriting Fellow at the STC. Hilary is a graduate of the Juilliard Playwrights’ Studio, NIDA and AFTRS. She has served on boards including Griffin, ANPC and Australian Plays. She is a member of 7-ON Playwrights and a New York Theatre Workshop Usual Suspect. Hilary is the creator, with illustrator Antonia Pesenti, of several picture books, including best-seller ‘Alphabetical Sydney’. Please visit hilarybell.org for more information.

NOËLLE JANACZEWSKA is a playwright, poet and essayist. She is the author of The Book of Thistles (UWA Publishing)—which fuses memoir, monologue, environmental history, archival collage and digressions—and the collection Scratchland (UWA Publishing Poetry Series). A graduate of Oxford and London Universities with a Doctorate from the University of Technology Sydney, she is the recipient of multiple awards, fellowships and residencies, including the NSW Premier’s Digital History Prize, a Queensland Premier’s Literary Award, the Griffin Award, multiple AWGIE Awards and a Windham-Campbell Prize from Yale for her body of work as a dramatist. Noëlle’s writing has been produced, broadcast and published internationally as well as locally. Recent productions include: The Past is a Wild Party, The End of Winter and Good With Maps—all three produced by Siren Theatre Company; Mrs C Private Detective and Experiment Street for ABC Radio National; Yellow Yellow Sometimes Blue and Teacup in a Storm for the Q Theatre/Joan Sutherland Performing Arts Centre. Performance essays are a key part of Noëlle’s writing practice. A hybrid form she has developed which combines big picture thinking with the intimacy of the theatrical monologue.

VERITY LAUGHTON’s 30+ produced works have been seen in Australia, New Zealand, Korea, Japan, the UK, and the USA. They include poetry, mainstage adult dramas, adaptations, plays for children and families, radio plays, a promenade community event, and a musical. Awards include the Griffin Prize; the Inscription Prize; AWGIES for Community and Radio Drama; and the Silver Tree Poetry Prize. Nominations include the NSW Premier’s Award; the STC Patrick White Award; the Griffin Prize; AWGIES, plus the Rodney Seaborn Prize (both twice); the Martin Lycistrates Award; runner up for the Blake Poetry Prize; the Bruce Dawe Poetry Prize; the Newcastle Poetry Prize; and the Text Unpublished YA Manuscript Award. Her most recent adaptation, The Dictionary of Lost Words won the South Australian Ruby Awards for Most Outstanding Work Outside a Festival; was Highly Commended in the Victorian Premier’s Awards 2023 and won the Stage Adpatation AWGIE Award in 2025. Recent productions include Long Tan, The Red Cross Letters and The Dictionary of Lost Words

NED MANNING is a writer, actor and teacher. His debut play, Us or Them, marked the Griffin Theatre Company’s transition from a co-op to a professional company. Other plays include Milo, Kenny’s Coming Home and Tsunami. Alice Dreaming, his large cast play for young people, is regularly performed by schools and youth theatre groups in Australia and overseas. Close to the Bone, developed with students at the EORA Centre in Redfern, is the first play written about the Stolen Generation. Luck of the Draw, a play on the same subject, was performed by Kooemba Jdarra and the Darwin Theatre Companies. He wrote ten plays for Bell Shakespeare’s Actors at Work program. As an actor, Ned starred in the cult classic, Dead End Drive-In as well as appearing in many Australian film and tv productions including Looking for Alibrandi, Mr Inbetween, The Shiralee, Bodyline and many more. His teaching memoir, Playground Duty, has become required reading for anyone embarking on a teaching career. His latest novel is Painting the Light.

VANESSA BATES is an award winning playwright, screenwriter and researcher. Her plays include The Magic Hour 2024, The One, Small Hard Things, A Ghost In My Suitcase, Trailer, Every Second, PORN.CAKE, Checklist For An Armed Robber and Darling Oscar. She has received a NSW Premier’s Prize, two AWGIE Awards, the Stoddart Playwriting Award and been shortlisted for the Victorian Premiers Award, STC Patrick White Award, Griffin Award, the Newton John Award, the 503 Playwriting Award, Brennan Playwriting Award and further AWGIE Awards. Vanessa received her doctorate in scriptwriting, examining Mixed Cultural Identity and effects on a playwrighting practice pivoted to screenwriting. She is one-seventh of playwrighting alliance 7ON. Several of their works have been published including Sharp Darts, No Nudity, Weapons or Naked Flames and as part of Short Circuits.

CATHERINE ZIMDAHL'S plays include Clark In Sarajevo and Family Running for Mr. Whippy. Both plays have been produced around Australia. Clark In Sarajevo won the 1998 Griffin Award, the ANPC New Dramatists' Exchange and the 1999 Louis Esson Prize of the Victorian Premier's Literary Award.

DONNA ABELA is an award-winning playwright. Her play Jump For Jordan won the 2013 Griffin Playwriting Award and the 2015 Australian Writers’ Guild’s AWGIE Award for Stage. It is on the HSC Drama Syllabus, was one of three Australian plays presented in Spanish at the 2018 Women Playwright’s International Conference in Santiago de Chile, and was the creative component of her 2016 doctoral thesis entitled Dialogic Interplay: a Strategy for Representing Difference and Cultural Diversity on Stage. Other recent plays include Monkey ... Journey to the West (2014 Brisbane Festival, 2015 Melbourne Festival, 2015 Sydney Opera House programs), Spirit (2016 AWGIE Award for Radio), Aurora’s Lament (2012 AWGIE Award for Radio), and Mrs Macquarie’s Cello (2010 AWGIE Award for Radio). Donna supports the development of new performance works, and leads processes that leverage the creative proficiency and resilience of writers. In the last year, she has taught, mentored or provided dramaturgy to over a hundred student, emerging and professional writers for screen and stage. She is a founding member and board member of PYT | Fairfield. Along with Vanessa Bates, Hilary Bell, Noëlle Janaczeska, Verity Laughton, Ned Manning and Cath Zimdahl, she is also a founding member of 7-ON, a playwrights’ alliance which advocates for playwrights and initiates production and publishing projects.