Sweaty Palms: Fear in Fiction

Madeleine Rebbechi is a writer based in Naarm/Melbourne. She has written music and arts reviews, radio scripts and media kits, but her true love is fiction. In 2022 she was highly commended in the Moth Short Story Prize, and in 2023 her story ‘Dip’ was published in the Kill Your Darlings anthology New Australian Fiction. She was awarded runner up in the 2023 Overland Neilma Sidney Short Story Prize, and is the 2024 recipient of the ASA/Varuna Ray Koppe Fellowship for Young Writers. She is currently working on a short story collection.

Alex writes for television, theatre, audio and fiction. His play Rakali was nominated for Best Theatre at the 2023 Melbourne Fringe, and called “gloriously original” and “deliciously entertaining” by critics after a sold out season. He wrote, directed and acted in seven-part audio drama “Hovering”, produced by Clea Frost and released in November 2023. He writes across many genres, including horror, thriller and comedy, often using an element of magic realism or supernatural to transform an everyday situation into something complex. He brings his experience as a queer person growing up in a small town in Tasmania into his work.

Em Starr (she/her) is an Australian horror writer, whose work has appeared or is forthcoming, in numerous publications, including Midnight Echo Vol 18, Fear of Clowns: A Horror Anthology, and Spawn 2: More Weird Horror Tales About Pregnancy, Birth and Babies. She lives in Melbourne, on Boon Wurrung land, with one husband and two naughty dogs, Nikko and Franco (aka Dick-Dack and Fron Bon Jovi). She is currently writing her debut novel, a surf horror set in 1990s Australia. Em is a proud member of the Horror Writers Association, and Australasian Horror Writers Association.