Lynda Hawryluk is a writer, poet and academic who coordinates the Associate Degree of Creative Writing at Southern Cross University. She also serves on the Byron Writers Festival Board.

Erik Jensen is the editor-in-chief of Schwartz Media and founding editor of The Saturday Paper. He is the author of Acute Misfortune: The Life and Death of Adam Cullen, On Kate Jennings and The Prosperity Gospel. His latest book is a collection of poems, I Said the Sea Was Folded. Jensen has won the Nib Prize for Literature and been shortlisted for the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards and the Walkley Book Award. He has written for film and television. The film adaptation of his first book won the Critics’ Prize at the Melbourne International Film Festival.

David Leser is an award winning journalist who has worked in Australia, North America, the Middle East, Europe and Asia for the past 43 years.

He won a Walkely award for feature writing for his expose of Alan Jones  called Who’s Afraid of Alan Jones and has been a Walkley finalist on three other occasions, as well as the recipient of a human rights commendation for journalism and three other national magazine awards for feature writing.

David is the author of 7 books, including a memoir To Begin to Know: Walking in the Shadows of My Father which was shortlisted for the 2015 National Biography Award. He is also editor of Paul Kelly: The Essays (2012), as well as Executive Producer of the award-winning Australian documentary Paul Kelly: Stories of Me.

David’s most recent book Women, Men and the Whole Damn Thing, published in 2019, explores the history of patriarchy and misogyny in the context of the #MeToo movement.

Born in Montreal, David is a senior contributing writer to Good Weekend magazine and also works as a public interviewer, guest lecturer, writing mentor, and speech writer. He has two daughters, Jordan, a singer-songwriter, and Hannah, an academic, and lives in Sydney.

Chris Hanley OAM is the Founder of Byron Writers Festival and was Chair for 20 years until 2016. He is the Principal of Byron Bay First National.

Ashley Hay is an award-winning novelist and essayist whose work has been praised for its ‘incandescent intelligence and a rare sensibility’. Her prizes include the Foundation of Australian Literary Studies’ Colin Roderick Award, the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards Peoples’ Choice, and the Bragg/UNSW Press Prize for Science Writing. Her books – including The Railwayman’s Wife and A Hundred Small Lessons – have been published to critical acclaim and commercial success in Australia, the US, the UK and in translation. A revised and updated edition of her popular 2002 narrative non-fiction book, Gum: The Story of Eucalypts and Their Champions, was published in late 2021.

She was the editor of Australia’s leading literary journal, the quarterly Griffith Review from 2018 until mid-2022. She lives in Brisbane.