Writing Hopeful Climate Futures

Amanda Anastasi is a Melbourne poet published both locally and internationally, including in Best Australian Science Writing and Best of Australian Poems. Amanda was Resident Poet for three years at the Monash Climate Change Communication Research Hub. She is a recipient of a Wheeler Centre Hot Desk Fellowship and a Neilma Sidney Travel Grant to write poetry at the Great Barrier Reef. In 2025, Amanda was commissioned to write a poem for COP30 Brazil by DFAT’s Climate Change Diplomacy Branch. She is the author of ‘Taking Apart the Bird Trap’ (Recent Work Press, 2024) and ‘The Inheritors’ (Black Pepper, 2021).

Kim Ho is an award-winning playwright and screenwriter based on Dja Dja Wurrung Country. Through a subversive approach to genre, Kim’s work often explores themes of cross-cultural encounter, our relationship to landscape, and the weight of history in the present. Their play MIRROR’S EDGE won Sydney Theatre Company’s Patrick White Playwright’s Award, and their satire THE GREAT AUSTRALIAN PLAY enjoyed seasons at Theatre Works and the Old Fitz. Kim has also developed plays under commission for STC and Malthouse. For screen, Kim has written on NCIS: SYDNEY and the International Emmy-nominated series THE NEWSREADER, and developed an eco-horror for SBS.

Zowie Douglas-Kinghorn is a Tasmanian-based writer with a particular interest in books, music, mental illness and environmental issues. Her recent work can be found in The Big Issue, Meanjin, and Best Australian Science Writing of 2025. In previous years, her writing has won the Scribe Nonfiction Prize, the Ultimo Prize for Young Writers, and been studied for high school exams. She is a 2024 Emerging Critic with the Sydney Review of Books and the previous editor of Voiceworks. In her day job she sells flowers, and can usually be found snipping gum leaves on the side of a highway somewhere.