2022 Judges

Nicholas Brodie

Nick Brodie is among Australia's most prolific and recognisable millennial historians. With expertise in medieval European and Australian frontier history, he has authored several books including 1787: the lost chapters of Australia's beginnings (2016), The Vandemonian War (2017), and Under Fire (2020). As well as publishing numerous academic articles, Nick has written many essays on history and politics that have appeared in the Griffith Review, The Australian, Tasmania's FortySouth, and the UK-based The Tablet. With a wide range of experience as a practitioner of applied and public history, Nick also has extensive media experience, including being the resident historian for ABC TV's Matter of Fact with Stan Grant (2018) and ABC Evenings (2019) and appearing in Blackfella Films' The Australian Wars for SBS (2022). Nick is currently Dean of Academic Studies at Jane Franklin Hall in Hobart.

Lucy Christopher

Lucy Christopher is a multi-award-winning and bestselling writer for young adults, children, and adults. Her work is psychological and emotional in scope, and often inspired by wild places. Her YA novels are published in over twenty countries and have won the Printz Honor Award, Gold Inky, Branford Boase Award, an International Reading Award and have been short-listed for the Costa Book Prize, the Waterstones Prize, the Children's Book Council of Australia Awards and the Australian Prime Minister's Awards. For many years she was Reader in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University, where she was also Course Director for the renowned MA in Writing for Young People. She now works as Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing for the University of Tasmania. Her latest psychological thriller, Release, was published by Text in 2022, and she is now working on a novel set in Tasmania.

Natasha Cica

Dr Natasha Cica is director of change consultancy Kapacity.org. She is former CEO of Heide Museum of Modern Art, established the Inglis Clark Centre in Tasmania, and is an honorary professor at the Australian National University. Natasha was recognised by The Australian Financial Review as one of Australia’s 100 Women of Influence and was an inaugural Sidney Myer Creative Fellow. Her books are Pedder Dreaming: Olegas Truchanas and a lost Tasmanian wilderness (UQP, 2011); Griffith Review 39: Tasmania – the tipping point? (Text, 2013; co-edited with Julianne Schultz) and Griffith Review 69: the European exchange (Text, 2020; co-edited with Ashley Hay).

Lucille Cutting

Lucie Cutting is journalist and co-founder of The Pin, a digital forum focused on individual stories of race, culture and identity in Australia. The website started in 2015 and went on to host live discussions in states across Australia, it is now archived via the online library database, Trove. Lucie has primarily worked in radio as a producer and presenter of local, sometimes national, programs. She is currently working as a features reporter for ABC Radio Hobart.

Stephanie Eslake

Stephanie Eslake is a freelance writer with a passion for the arts. She has written program notes and brochures for leading Australian orchestras and arts organisations, and her journalism has featured in publications such as The Guardian, SBS, Island Magazine, Meanjin, and ArtsHub. In 2014 Stephanie founded CutCommon, Australia's independent publication dedicated to classical and new music. For her efforts in writing and editing, Stephanie has received an APRA AMCOS Art Music Award, Tasmanian Young Achiever Award, and was named Hobart's Young Citizen of the Year. She recently finished writing her first book A Writer's Guide to the Arts, which is designed to share communication skills with fellow arts industry practitioners. This project was supported by the Tasmanian Government and heads towards publication in 2023.

Vern Field

Vern Field has served as Managing Editor of Island Magazine since 2016. She has an academic background in English literature and has more than 25 years of experience as a professional editor and writer. She has taught editing and publishing at a number of Victorian TAFE institutes and at Deakin University. She edited Behrouz Boochani's memoir, No Friend But the Mountains, which won the Victorian Prize for Literature and the National Biography Award in 2019. As well as her role at Island, she regularly writes and edits for several corporate clients. She lives in Hobart with her husband and three children.

Lisa Fletcher

Lisa Fletcher is Head of the School of Humanities and Professor of English at the University of Tasmania. She has a particular interest in contemporary literary culture and industry. Her books include Genre Worlds: popular fiction and Twenty-First-Century literary culture (with Kim Wilkins and Beth Driscoll, University of Massachusetts Press, 2022), Popular Fiction and Spatiality: reading genre settings (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), Cave: nature and culture (with Ralph Crane, Reaktion Books, 2015), and Historical Romance Fiction: heterosexuality and performativity (Ashgate, 2008)

Sam George-Allan

Sam George-Allan is a writer, musician and teacher based on unceded melukerdee country in southern lutruwita/Tasmania. Her first book, Witches: what women do together, is a celebration of the power and pleasure of women working together and was published in Australia in March 2019 by Penguin Random House and internationally in January 2020 by Melville House. Her essays and cultural criticism have been published in The Guardian, The Lifted Brow, Overland, The Griffith Review and Kill Your Darlings, among others. She produces a podcast about creative writing called First Word and edits a journal of first-time writers’ work called the First Word Journal (you can submit your own work here). She is currently writing her first novel, a work of speculative fiction based on her research into the botany of the future. The rest of her time is spent gardening and thinking about Kate Bush.

Jordy Gregg

Matthew Lamb

Matthew Lamb is currently working on a cultural biography of Australian author, Frank Moorhouse. He writes the Public Things Newsletter, and is the former editor of Island magazine, and former editor and co-founder of Review of Australian Fiction.

Alana Mann

Alana Mann is Professor and Head of Discipline, Media, at University of Tasmania, and a scholar-activist in the field of food politics. Her research on the dynamics of small-scale farmers and fishers’ movements, digital food activism, and the political relevance of food media is published internationally. Advocating for social and political transformations that make food systems fairer and more sustainable, her latest book is Food in a Changing Climate (2021).

Chris Mansell

Chris Mansell has published over a dozen books of poetry, the latest of which are 101 Quads (Puncher & Wattmann) and Foxline (Flying Islands). Her poetry has been translated into many languages and won prizes. She is known for her experimental, and sometimes seriously playful, approach in which she crosses boundaries, but like all true poets, she stays true to her words. Chris Mansell lives in beautiful Shoalhaven in New South Wales among the beaches and the cows but travels frequently to cities to engage and perform there.

Abbey MacDonald

Dr Abbey MacDonald is a Senior Lecturer in Arts Education at the University of Tasmania. She brings a combination of Visual Arts, Media Arts, and Subject English professional practice and classroom teaching experience to her delivery of teacher education and professional learning. She designs, develops and evaluates content, curriculum and education resources for schools, museums, galleries and social transformation organisations. Storying is central to Abbey’s teaching and research across discipline, cultural and education settings locally, nationally and internationally. Reading, writing and responding to stories is a popular pastime for Abbey and her young family. Abbey is a committed volunteer and leader of Arts, Culture and Education initiatives and organisations locally and nationally.

Sue McKerracher

Sue McKerracher joined Libraries Tasmania as Executive Director in 2022. This move followed a 20-year career working with libraries in the UK and Australia, during which time she had a strong focus on literacy and reading for children and young people. Sue reviewed the Centre for Youth Literature and Young Readers’ Program for the State Library of Victoria (2009-2010); ran the Australian National Year of Reading in 2012 and was a founder member (2016) and Chair (2019-2021) of the National Early Language and Literacy Coalition. In her previous role as CEO of the Australian Library and Information Association for nine years, Sue worked with authors, publishers and booksellers to raise awareness of the benefits of reading through the Australia Reads campaign.

Kate Middleton

Kate Middleton is an Australian writer. She is the author of the poetry collections Fire Season (Giramondo, 2009), awarded the Western Australian Premier’s Award for Poetry in 2009, Ephemeral Waters (Giramondo, 2013), shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s award in 2014, and Passage (Giramondo, 2017). From September 2011 to September 2012 she was the inaugural Sydney City Poet. In 2020 she was runner up for the Australian Book Review’s Calibre Award. She is currently the poetry editor for Island.

Naomi Milthorpe

Naomi Milthorpe is Senior Lecturer in English at the School of Humanities, University of Tasmania. She is the Head of Discipline of English and the Course Coordinator for the Bachelor of Arts. Naomi’s research centres on modernist, interwar and mid-century British literary culture. She is the author of Evelyn Waugh’s Satire: texts and contexts (2016) and the editor of the essay volume The Poetics and Politics of Gardening in Hard Times (2019). Naomi is currently completing a scholarly edition of Waugh’s 1932 novel Black Mischief, volume 3 of Oxford University Press’s Complete Works of Evelyn Waugh.

Lyndon Riggall

Lyndon Riggall is a writer and senior-secondary English teacher from Launceston. He is the author of the picture books Becoming Ellie (illustrated by Graeme Whittle), and Tamar the Thief (illustrated by Grace Roberts), and is co-host, with Annie Warburton, of the Tamar Valley Writers Festival Podcast.

Madeline Wells

Madeline is a qualified teacher’s aide and is inspired by her family who have also worked in education and community organisations and have made a positive impact across Tasmania. She has worked with organisations such as Big Hart, TasTAFE, The Smith Family, Seed Indigenous Youth Climate Network, The Australia Institute, Tradeswomen Australia, AFL SportsReady, Bonorong Wildlife Sanctuary, Arts Tasmania and local schools. In 2016, Madeline won the NAIDOC Tasmanian Aboriginal Young Person of the Year and was a 2018 Young Leader for Women Deliver. In 2019 she represented Australia as an Amnesty International delegate as part of their Global Youth Task Force, as well as at a youth forum at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland in 2016. Madeline speaks at events like these talking about her experiences and as an advocate for justice, change and truth telling. She mentors and supports young people to stand up and speak about the changes they want to see in the world and want to be part of. Madeline has written for Island Magazine and supports initiatives that encourage higher levels of literacy in Tasmania.

Kathleen Williams

Dr Kathleen Williams is the Associate Head of Research in the School of Creative Arts and Media, and a Senior Lecturer in Media at the University of Tasmania. She has established new interdisciplinary teaching and learning at the University, encouraging collaboration across the creative disciplines. Kathleen typically researches the relationship between media and social, technological, industrial and environmental change, and has numerous academic publications on these topics. She is an avid reader, a frustrating person to watch television with if you don’t like commentary, and fundamentally enjoys all forms of storytelling

Rohan Wilson

Rohan Wilson is a writer, teacher, and critic. He is the author of three novels, The Roving Party (2011) To Name Those Lost (2014), and Daughter of Bad Times (2019). His work has won numerous awards, including the 2011 The Australian/Vogel's Literary Award, the 2015 Victorian Premier’s Award, and the 2016 Adelaide Festival Award. He lectures in Creative Writing at QUT. His academic research has focused fiction’s difficult relationship with history and the ways in which the Australian novel imagines its connection to the past.