As part of Kill Your Darlings’ commitment to in-depth arts coverage, we have selected nine regular columnists to cover Australian books and writing; film and television; and music, theatre and visual arts throughout 2012.

Caroline Hamilton is a research fellow at the University of Melbourne investigating the future of publishing, writing and reading. She has also written a book about the publishing success of Dave Eggers, One Man Zeitgeist.

S.A. Jones is obsessed with readers and writing, writers and reading. She supports her obsession with a financially crippling addiction to bookstores and the odd tipple of chardonnay. She is the author of the novel Red Dress Walking and of numerous essays. Her goal for 2012 is to finish her current novel Isabelle of the Moon and Stars whilst holding down a full time job and her grip on reality.

Laurie Steed is a writer, editor and reviewer based in Perth, Western Australia. His writing has appeared online and in various literary journals and he is currently studying for his PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Western Australia. In 2011, he was selected for both Rosebank and Varuna writing fellowships and he is a recently appointed member of the Emerging Writers Festival PAC (Program Advisory Committee).

Thomas Caldwell is a freelance writer, broadcaster and public speaker who specialises in film criticism and educational writing on film. He writes the blog Cinema Autopsy and reviews films for the Breakfasters and Plato’s Cave on Triple R (3RRR 102.7FM). Thomas is the author of the secondary school textbook Film Analysis Handbook, and his film reviews, articles and interviews have appeared in The Age, The Big Issue, Overland, Senses of Cinema, Metro and Screen Education. He won the Ivan Hutchinson Award for Writing on Australian Film in the 2010 Australian Film Critics Association (AFCA) Writing Awards.

Kate Harper is a seventh generation St. Helens Tasmanian. She flew the Island coop nine years ago to study archaeology and cinema at the University of Melbourne. Watching and reading about films quickly won out over diagrams of digging techniques and pottery identification. She is now a freelance writer and has contributed to Screen Education, Metro Magazine and Arena Magazine, as well as Kill Your Darlings, No. 7.

Brad Nguyen is a Melbourne-based writer and editor of the film criticism website Screen Machine (www.screenmachine.tv).

Nikki Lusk is an editor based in Melbourne. She matches books to music at The Book Tuner.

Timothy Roberts is a Melbourne-based writer whose current interests include Victorian literature, Roman history, baking and gardening. His writing has been published in The Age, College Literature, The Australian Rationalist, The New Matilda and The European Legacy, among many other publications. He is also the author of several student guides to classic and modern works of literature. Much of his writing can be found on his website (www.punctuateorperish.com).

Julia Tulloh lives in Melbourne and writes about feminism, books, television, film, music, art and theatre. She is obsessed with pop music, Batman, and the novels of Cormac McCarthy. She has just returned from the University of Edinburgh, where she completed her MSc in English Literature. Julia has produced a couple of independent theatre productions, acted in many, and has also worked as a lighting technician. In Scotland, she worked as a journal editor and in Berlin, as a pub tour guide; she currently writes early childhood policy for the Victorian state government. Her blog is pixielit.blogspot.com.

This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.