Emotional Cities

Peter Timms is the author of several books, including Making Nature: Six Walks in the Bush (2001), What’s Wrong with Contemporary Art? (2004), and most recently Private Lives: Australians at Home Since Federation (2008).

Peter lives in Hobart, although he was born and educated in Melbourne. He has been a freelance writer since 1988, including periods as editor of Art Monthly Australia and art critic for The Age.

Kerryn Goldsworthy is a freelance writer and critic, and a former academic who lectured in literature at the University of Melbourne for 17 years.

A former editor of Australian Book Review and a member of the editorial team that produced The Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature (2009), she has edited four other anthologies of Australian writing and has published essays, articles, reviews, short stories and literary criticism – including a collection of short stories, North of the Moonlight Sonata, and a critical study of the work of Helen Garner. Her most recent book is Adelaide (2011) in the NewSouth ‘Cities’ series.

Kerryn was the Australian Book Review Ian Potter Foundation Fellow in 2013. In the same year, she won the Pascall Prize for cultural criticism, earning the title Australian Critic of the Year. She was the inaugural Chair of the Stella Prize judging panel (2013–2015) and won the 2017 Horne Prize for her essay ‘The Limit of the World’. She lives and works in her home town of Adelaide.

Louise Swinn is a journalist, editor, critic and writer, co-founder of Sleepers independent publishers, the Small Press Network, and the Stella Prize. Louise edited Choice Words (Allen & Unwin, 2019), a collection of pieces demystifying abortion, and currently works as a journalist with the Australian Education Union.

Delia Falconer is a Sydney-based novelist, essayist and writer of short stories.

Born in the late sixties, Delia grew up in a Sydney “caught between a faded Deco age and destruction”. Her first novel, The Service of Clouds (Picador, 1997), set in Sydney’s Blue Mountains, was nominated for major Australian literary prizes, including the Miles Franklin. It was published in the US by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, and in Germany by S Fischer Verlag. Her second novel, The Lost Thoughts of Soldiers (Picador, 2005) was published in the US by Soft Skull Press and Counterpoint. It was nominated for major awards including the Commonwealth Prize and Spur Awards (US). Her essays and stories have been widely anthologised in publications including Best Australian Essays and Best Australian Stories.

Matthew Condon is an award-winning writer and journalist.

Award-winning writer and journalist Matthew Condon is the author of more than ten highly acclaimed books, including novels, non-fiction and short-story collections. He has written for leading newspapers and journals including Brisbane's Courier-Mail, the Sydney Morning Herald and Melbourne's Sunday Age.