National Biography Award

Melinda Harvey is a book critic who has written for a wide variety of Australian newspapers and magazines since 2004. She has been a Walkley Awards finalist for her criticism and has served as on numerous judging panels, including the Miles Franklin Literary Award (2017-2021) and Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize (2021-2022). She is Lecturer in English at Monash University.

Jason Om is an award-winning reporter with the ABC’s 7.30 program, author of the memoir, All Mixed Up, and a presenter. In 2021, Jason won the Media Diversity Australia Award at the Mid-Year Walkleys, and in 2022, the media accolade at the NSW (LGBTQ) Honour Awards. In 2017, he won widespread praise for his personal story about his dad’s sixteen-year struggle to accept him as gay. Previously, Jason has been a presenter on the ABC News Channel and a reporter for ABC News Breakfast, ABC Life, Lateline and ABC Radio. All Mixed Up is his first book.

Eda Gunaydin is a Turkish-Australian memoirist and critic whose writing explores class, capital, intergenerational trauma and diaspora. You can find her work in the Sydney Review of Books, HEAT Magazine, Meanjin and elsewhere. Her debut essay collection Root & Branch: Essays on Inheritance won the 2022 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Non-Fiction, and was shortlisted for the Matt Richell Prize for New Writer of the Year at the 2023 ABIAs.