John Walker was born, raised and worked on a farm near Bombala for 50 years. Now he plays with words and dabbles in philosophy.

Laurie McDonald is a performance poet who has been writing and reciting poetry for 30 years. His CD – Laurie McDonald Live...at the Murrumbateman Pub – was a finalist for Album of the Year in the Australian Bush Laureate Awards at Tamworth in 2014 and receives regular radio air play. He published his book of rhyming verse and free verse – Slow Down to Mine – in 2017. He was convenor of the Spoken Word Program at the National Folk Festival in Canberra from 2012 to 2019. He writes quirky observations of life ranging from the serious to the ridiculous.

Rina Kikuchi is a poetry translator, a professor of literature at Shiga University, Japan, and an adjunct Associate Professor of poetry in the Faculty of Arts and Design at the University of Canberra. She is currently working on a bilingual anthology of contemporary Japanese women poets, co-translation project on Misaki Takako’s poetry and research project on Japanese women’s poetry of the Asia Pacific War. Her books of poetry translations include Poet to Poet: Contemporary Women Poets from Japan (RWP, 2017, co-edited with Jen Crawford) and Pleasant Troubles (RWP, 2018, co-edited with Harumi Kawaguchi).