Sandy Jeffs was born in Ballarat and has a BA from La Trobe University. She has lived with schizophrenia and all its moods for 40 years. She is a community educator who speaks to schools, universities and community groups about what it's like to live with a mental illness. She has been published widely and is a prize-winning poet whose writing has been concerned with madness, domestic violence and the humorous antics of women who play midweek ladies' tennis. Sandy is the author of the bestselling Poems from the Madhouse (1993; reprinted 2000, 2001), Loose Kangaroos (co-author, 1998), Blood Relations (2000), Confessions of a Midweek Lady: Tall Tennis Tales (2001), and The Wings of Angels: A memoir of madness (2004).She is the author of a memoir, Flying with Paper Wings: Reflections on Living With Madness (2009) which won the SANE Book of the Year Award.Her latest collections of poetry are The Mad Poet's Tea Party (2015) and Chiarascuro (2015).Sandy lives with her friends and animals on the outskirts of Melbourne.

Deborah Staines has had poetry published in the literary journals Meanjin, Heat, and Southerly, as well as in her debut, award-winning volume Now Millennium with Spinifex Press. She is the author of book and film reviews, and academic articles and books. She has a PhD in Cultural Studies, was a Visiting Research Fellow at Cambridge University, UK, and is completing a Master of International Relations. In response to the invasion of Iraq, Deborah edited the volume of critical essays Interrogating the War on Terror: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007). She also co-edited the comprehensive The Chamberlain Case: Nation, Law, Memory (Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2009). She is currently writing a book on the Holocaust, and working towards a second volume of poetry. She resides in Castlemaine, Victoria.