Paul Hetherington is an Australian poet and academic, who also worked for 19 years at the National Library of Australia. He is Professor of Writing at the University of Canberra where he heads the university's International Poetry Studies Institute (IPSI) which he co-founded. He is an editor of the international journal Axon: Creative Explorations and co-founder of the International Prose Poetry Project.

Donald Stuart Leslie Friend was an Australian artist and diarist who lived much of his life overseas. He has been the subject of controversy since the posthumous publication of diaries in which he wrote about how he sexually abused children during his time in Bali.