Dr Rachel Hennessy is a Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Melbourne. She is the award winning author of five novels: The Quakers (2008), The Heaven I Swallowed (2013), River Stone (2019), Mountain Arrow (2020), and City Knife (2023). Rachel has strong experience as both a published author and a creative writing academic. She has been awarded grants from the Australia Council for the Arts, Flinders University and the University of Melbourne and has a building reputation as a critical researcher in climate fiction, posthumanism and creative writing pedagogy.