NWC – Who Are You Writing For?

Award-winning author, JJ Carpenter, celebrates our personal stories and unearths our hidden histories through thrilling, terrifying tales.

She writes gothic and psychological fiction rooted in Australian history. Her work explores trauma, memory, and survival, often set within haunted places where the past presses uncomfortably into the present.

Brendon McLeod is an award-winning emerging writer of fiction, poetry, and drama. He is a PhD candidate in creative writing at The University of Sydney, and was awarded the Arthur Macquarie Travelling Scholarship. He won Indiana Review’s 2025 Fiction Award. In 2023 he was awarded a fellowship to Varuna The National Writers’ House. He was shortlisted for the 2023 Judith Wright Poetry Prize. His poems and short stories have been published or are forthcoming in Rabbit Poetry, Overland, Australian Poetry Journal, and Indiana Review, among others. He lives and works on Wiradyuri/Wiradjuri country in regional New South Wales.

Maria Takolander is a Finnish-Australian writer of fiction, poetry and non-fiction. She won the inaugural Australian Book Review Elizabeth Jolley Prize, was shortlisted in the inaugural Australian Book Review Peter Porter Poetry Prize, and came second in the 2026 Australian Book Review Calibre Essay Prize. Her last book of poetry, Trigger Warning (UQP 2021), won the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award. Her debut novel, The End of Romance (Text 2026), is available now. Her words can also be found on bronze plaques in the Geelong CBD and at the Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria.

Elise Thornthwaite is a Gamilaraay woman, emerging writer, and mother originally from New South Wales who now lives in Milikapiti on the Tiwi Islands. She writes poetry, young adult fiction, and maintains a blog alongside her creative practice. Her work explores themes of home, identity, motherhood, and belonging, and is shaped by place, community, and storytelling. Balancing writing with life as a stay-at-home mum, she can often be found working on poems, essays, and manuscripts during naptimes and in the quiet moments between family life.