DAVID IRELAND, born in Lakemba, NSW, first came to notice in 1958 when his play Image in the Clay shared third prize in a competition. After pursuing a variety of occupations, he became a full-time writer. He has written another play, The Virgin of Treadmill Street, as well as poetry, but is best known for his novels, for which he won the Miles Franklin Award on three occasions (1971, 1976 and 1979).

KATHARINE BRISBANE AM, Hon.Ph.D (UNSW, UWA) was co-founder in 1971 of Currency Press Pty Ltd, the performing arts publishers and its publisher for 30 years. In 2001 she founded Currency House Inc. as a non-profit association to assert the value of the performing arts in public life. She was a theatre critic for 21 years, notably national critic of the Australian 1967–74 during a time of radical change; and has published extensively on the history of Australian theatre, including Not Wrong, Just Different: Observations on the Rise of Contemporary Australian Theatre (2005) and on drama in The Cambridge History of Australian Literature (ed Peter Pierce, 2009). Over 40 years she has received many awards for service to the performing arts.

PETER KENNA (1930–1987) was one of thirteen children brought up in an Irish Catholic family in the working class Sydney suburb of Balmain. A radio and stage actor, he first attracted national attention as a writer in 1959 when The Slaughter of St Teresa's Day won a General Motors-Holden National Playwriting Competition. He moved to London in 1959 where he wrote Talk to the Moon and Muriel's Virtues. He returned to live in Sydney in 1971, debilitated by a chronic illness. Nevertheless, the 1970s proved to be his most fruitful decade with Listen Closely, Mates, Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted, and The Cassidy Album Trilogy—A Hard God, Furtive Love and An Eager Hope, which was written between 1973 and 1982.

RAY MATHEW (1929–2003) was born in Sydney. While training as a teacher, he worked as a journalist, lecturer, art critic and editor, as well as a poet and playwright. He moved to London in 1960 and settled in New York in 1968, where he remained until his death. His plays include Church Sunday, Sing for St Ned, We find the Bunyip, The Life of the Party , The Bones of My Toe and A Spring Song. The Life of the Party was a finalist in the 1957 London Observer International Play Competition, as a result of which Mathew received a Commonwealth Literary Fund grant in 1958.

BARBARA VERNON (1916–78) grew up in Inverell, northern NSW, and studied Arts at the University of Queensland. She served in the Psychological Division of the RAAF in World War II and later joined radio station 2NZ, Inverell, as an announcer. In 1959 she moved to Sydney and in 1966 joined the ABC Drama Department as a script editor. She was a prolific writer for stage, radio and television. Her plays include The Passionate Pianist, The Naked Possum, and many one-acters and plays for children. She originated the long-running TV serial, Bellbird, co-wrote the acclaimed ABC miniseries adaptation of Seven Little Australians, and contributed to Certain Women.