Louise Nicholas was born in Port Lincoln, South Australia. She has published a further seven collections of poetry. These include The Red Shoes (in Friendly Street Poets ‘New Poets Three’), The List of Last Remaining (Five Islands Press), Large (Garron Press), Meet My Mother (Ginninderra Press), and three self-published chapbooks of humorous verse. Her work has been published in three Best of Australian ... anthologies and she has been a guest speaker at many community events and festivals.
With a background that included Croatian, Scottish and English heritage, Jude Aquilina grew up in Magill, South Australia. She matriculated at Norwood High School and her early jobs included as a writer for Flim Flam Singing Telegrams and selling piano accordions. Jude's poetry and short stories are published across Australia and abroad. She has taught creative writing for three decades, at Flinders University, Adelaide College of the Arts, at libraries, schools, community centres and in a prison. Jude works as an educator, editor, writing mentor and is partner in Em-Dash Publishing. She has published four books with Wakefield Press including Knifing the Ice, On a Moon Spiced Night and WomanSpeak (with Louise Nicholas). Jude Aquilina lives in Milang and was the 2018 recipient of the Barbara Hanrahan Fellowship for her sustained contribution to South Australian literature.
Rick Atkinson lives in Adelaide where he was born in 1943. He spent a great deal of his life teaching architecture and urban design until recently, when he cut loose to find more diverse ways of pursuing his interest in urban life. The latest of these has been an invitation from Jude and Louise to sketch his responses to some of the poems in WomanSpeak. Rick still maintains his urban design teaching through annual design studios in both Adelaide and Penang.