NWC – How to Tell a Story

Melanie Cheng is a writer based in Naarm/Melbourne. Her short story collection, Australia Day, won the 2016 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an unpublished manuscript and the 2018 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Fiction. Her novels, Room for a Stranger and The Burrow, were both longlisted for the Miles Franklin Award. The Burrow was also shortlisted for the 2025 Stella Prize. Her short stories and non fiction have been published widely in Australia and overseas.

I am Apyang Imiq, a Truku writer and novelist raised in the Cyakang community in Taiwan. Grounded in my village, my creative practice deeply intertwines literature with Truku culture, plant knowledge, and place-based writing. As the author of I Grow in the Open Tree Hollow and Thigh Mountain, I explore the complex dialogues between tradition and contemporary life. Through my writing and community work, I actively map the emotional geography and ecology of my people, searching for the continuous threads that connect ancestors, our land, and the modern Indigenous experience.

Raeden Richardson is the author of The Degenerates (Text Publishing) which was nominated for the Miles Franklin Award. His writing has appeared in Griffith Review, The Sydney Morning Herald, Meanjin and New Australian Fiction. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, he has received support from Creative Australia and the Ian Potter Cultural Trust.

Michael Winkler is a writer of fiction and non-fiction. His latest novel, Griefdogg, is about a Mildura water scientist who wants to live as the family pet, but discovers this gives him unwanted insights into secret grief. His previous novel Grimmish, shortlisted for the 2022 Miles Franklin Literary Award, was published in the UK, North America and Spain (in translation). Michael won the Calibre Prize for his essay ‘The Great Red Whale’. His journalism, reviews, short fiction and essays have been widely published and anthologised.