Contributors

Mama Alto

Mama Alto is a jazz singer, cabaret artiste and gender transcendent diva. She is a transgender and queer person of colour who works with the radical potential of storytelling, strength in softness, and power in vulnerability. As part of a 2019 Creative Victoria Creators Fund Fellowship and a 2020 Wheeler Centre Hot Desk Fellowship, she is working on a forthcoming book exploring the concept of the diva.

Read Mama’s essay here.

Léa Antigny

Léa Antigny is a writer and publicist living in Sydney. Her non-fiction has been published in The Guardian, Kill Your Darlings, The Lifted Brow and elsewhere. She tries not to tweet at @leaantigny.

Read Léa’s essay here.

Chris Ardley

Chris Ardley is a writer, glassblower and educator living in Melbourne. He is the recipient of ScreenWest OOMF funding for his debut film While You Have Light, and is currently working on a collection of short stories.

Read Chris’ essay here.

Shikha Bafna

Shikha Bafna is a gemologist and jeweller. She keeps shuffling between India and Indonesia. She likes writing about jewellery here. When not writing about jewellery, she keeps a document of her life here.

Read Shikha’s essay here.

Nadia Bailey

Nadia Bailey is a writer and editor. She is the 2020 National Library of Australia Creative Arts Fellow for Australian Writing, and was the recipient of the 2019 Kraków City of Literature Creative Fellowship. She is currently working on her first novel. 

Read Nadia’s essay here.

Tyree Barnette

Tyree Barnette is a writer originally from North Carolina, USA. His other published works include a collection of articles written for SBS Voices where he explores being an African-American man in Australia. He is also part of the Sweatshop Writer’s Collective based out of Western Sydney that works with CALD writers and creatives.

Read Tyree’s essay here.

Alice Bishop

Alice Bishop

Alice Bishop was recently named Sydney Morning Herald’s Best Young Novelist of 2020. Her book, A Constant Hum, is out now through Text Publishing. Find out more here.

Read Alice’s essay here.

Adelaide Bon

Adélaïde Bon

Adélaïde Bon is a French writer, actress and a feminist activist, living in Paris. Her first book, a work of non-fiction called The Little Girl on the Ice Floe, about the aftermath of childhood rape, has been translated in seven languages and won several prices. She is currently working on her first novel. 

Read Adélaïde’s essay here.

Liz Breslin

Liz Breslin writes poems, plays, stories, reviews and a regular opinion column at Otaga Daily Times. Her poetry collection Alzheimer’s and a Spoon made it to The NZ Listener’s Top 100 Books of 2017. She was a UNESCO Cities of Literature writer-in-residence in Kraków, Poland in 2019. Find out more here.

Read Liz’s essay here.

Lauren Cerand

Lauren Cerand is a writer and jeweller. She lives with her cat, Toscano, in the San Frediano neighborhood of Florence, Italy. Find her on Twitter here.

Read Lauren’s essay here.

Candice Chung

Candice Chung is a Sydney-based freelance journalist and editor. She writes about food and culture for The Sydney Morning Herald, SBS, Peddler Journal and more. Candice edits SBS’s Emerging Writers Project which supports the work of young Asian-Australian writers.

Read Candice’s essay here.

Mikaella Clements

 Mikaella Clements is an Australian writer currently based in Berlin. Her fiction and non-fiction can be found in the New York Times, Guardian, Catapult, Buzzfeed, Hazlitt and more. Her first novel, co-written with Onjuli Datta, is due out in July 2021.

Read Mikaella’s essay here.

Nic Dowse

Nic Dowse is the founder of Melbourne-based creative beekeeping studio Honey Fingers. He writes essays on his beekeeping observations and travels, publishes poetry and photographs, and collaborates with honeybees to produce ephemeral sculptures. Find out more here.

Read Nic’s essay here.

Bre Audrey Graham

Bre Graham is a writer and editor. She has written for Refinery 29, Stylist, and Riposte amongst others and was Associate Editor of Oh Comely magazine. Bre runs Dishes To Delight and is currently working on her non-fiction debut. Originally from Sydney, she lives in London. 

Read Bre’s essay here.

Eloise Grills by Leah Jing

Eloise Grills

Eloise Grills is an award-winning writer, artist, critic and poet. Her work has been published in The Rumpus, Meanjin, Cosmonauts Avenue, and Kill Your Darlings, among others. She is currently working on her first full-length book, an illustrated memoir called big beautiful female theory, about big fat sexy bodies. It will be published by Affirm Press in early 2022. She tweets and grams as @grillzoid.

Read Eloise’s essay here.

Charlotte Guest

Charlotte Guest is a writer and bookseller based in Geelong, Victoria. Her work has appeared in The Weekend Australian, Island Magazine, Kill Your Darlings, Griffith Review, Overland, and Westerly Magazine. Her story ‘Flight Mode’ was shortlisted for the 2020 Peter Carey Award. Charlotte is the recipient of the 2020 Tina Kane Emerging Writer Award, administered by Arts Mildura, and in 2021 she will be a Lemon Tree House International Artist-in-residence in Tuscany, Italy. 

Read Charlotte’s essay here.

Lana Guineay

Lana Guineay is a freelance writer who lives by the sea in Adelaide. Her non-fiction and fiction has appeared in The Guardian, Going Down Swinging, The Adelaide Review, Anthology of Australasian Stories, the 2019 Swinburne Microfiction award and more. Her first book, Dark Wave, was recently shortlisted for the Viva La Novella prize. She is currently working on her second novel and is on staff at Writers SA. She tweets here

Read Lana’s essay here.

Victoria Hannan

Victoria Hannan’s first novel, Kokomo, won the 2019 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript. It’s out now through Hachette.

Read Victoria’s essay here.

Neha Kale

Neha Kale is a writer and critic. Her non-fiction has appeared in many places including SBS, The Guardian, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Saturday Paper, Griffith Review and more. She is the former editor of VAULT Magazine. 

Read Neha’s essay here.

Simi Kang

Simi Kang is a Sikh American community advocate, educator, artist, and scholar. She is currently a Mellon Sawyer Postdoctoral Fellow at Carnegie Mellon University. Her work has appeared in The Asian American Literary Review, Kartika ReviewHyphen MagazineOpen Rivers: Rethinking Water, Place & CommunityGravy, and Gastronomica. 

Read Simi’s essay here.

Bridget Lutherborrow

Bridget Lutherborrow is a writer and communications professional living in Melbourne. Her work explores topics such as foraging, feelings, lumberjills and anthropomorphic horses, and has appeared in publications such as The Lifted BrowGoing Down Swinging and Cordite. She has a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Wollongong and tweets at @birtiledge.

Read Bridget’s essay here.

Stephanie Madewell

Stephanie Madewell is the editor of Broccoli. She lives in a stone house in the suburbs of Cleveland, Ohio, that she is slowly filling with books and keeps a blog called Even*Cleveland to catalog stray thoughts, thematic obsessions, original writing, and things she wishes she could buy.

Read Stephanie’s essay here.

David Matthews

David Matthews is a writer, editor and sometime chef living in Sydney. He’s the former restaurant critic and national restaurant guide editor of Gourmet Traveller and has been playing Zelda since Ocarina of Time. Follow him here.

Read David’s essay here.

Jacinta Mulders

Jacinta Mulders is an Australia-based writer, critic and former lawyer. She has an MA in Prose Fiction from the University of East Anglia. Her work is available to read here.

Read Jacinta’s essay here.

Liam Pieper

Liam Pieper is an author and former (and probably future) line cook. His 2014 memoir, The Feel-Good Hit of the Year, was shortlisted for the National Biography Award and the Ned Kelly Best True Crime award. His first novel The Toymaker won the Fellowship of Australian Writers Christina Stead Fiction Award. He was the 2018 National Library of Australia Creative Arts Fellow for Australian Writing. Sweetness and Light is his new novel. 

Read Liam’s essay here.

Sam van Zweden

Sam van Zweden is a Melbourne-based writer interested in the ways food, memory, mental health and the body interact. Her first book, Eating with my Mouth Open, will be released with NewSouth in February 2021.

Read Sam’s essay here.

Erika Veurink

Erika Veurink is a writer living in Brooklyn by way of Iowa. She is receiving her MFA from Bennington College. Her work has appeared in Brooklyn Review, Cheap Pop, Hobart, Midwest Review, Triangle House, x-r-a-y, and elsewhere. 

Read Erika’s essay here.

Hannah-Rose Yee

Hannah-Rose Yee is a writer living in Sydney. She writes about culture, modern life and the zeitgeist for Vogue, marie claire, Gourmet Traveller, Sydney Morning Herald and Man Repeller.

Read Hannah-Rose’s essay here.