QPAC

Facilitator

Rebecca Levingston has spent a good chunk of the last twenty years inside the studios at ABC Radio. First she was behind the scenes producing and since 2012 she’s been behind the microphone hosting her own shows. Rebecca has anchored Breakfast, Mornings, Drive, Weekends and statewide Evenings where she’s loved delving into the diverse and delicious stories of the world.

Rebecca began writing opinion columns for InQld.com in 2020. She loves words (both written and spoken) and occasionally makes up new ones.

Author

Pip Williams was born in London, grew up in Sydney, and now lives in the Adelaide Hills with her family and an assortment of animals.
She has spent most of her working life as a social researcher, studying what keeps us well and what helps us thrive, and she is the author of One Italian Summer, a memoir of her family’s travels in search of the good life, which was published by Affirm Press to wide acclaim.
Her first novel, The Dictionary of Lost Words, based on her original research in the Oxford English Dictionary archives, was published in 2020 and became an international bestseller. Its much anticipated companion novel, The Bookbinder of Jericho, became an instant number one bestseller when it was published in April 2023.

Playwright

Verity Laughton is a multi-award winning Australian playwright and poet. Her 30+ produced works have been seen in Australia, New Zealand, Korea, Japan, the UK and the USA. They include mainstage adult dramas, adaptations, plays for children and families, radio plays, a promenade community event and a musical.
Her recent productions include Long Tan (Brink Productions) and The Red Cross Letters (State Theatre Company South Australia), and she has written for TV and video, as well as articles, reviews, and poems in publications such as the Australian Book Review, Best Australian Poems 2016 and The Griffith Review.

Verity completed a PhD in the political theatre of trauma at Flinders University in 2020. Her current work includes the SAFC-funded development of a film, Flatlands, with director Matthew Thorne; the publication of a book of poetry, Snake, with UK-based The Signal House Edition and a song cycle based on a reimagining of Shakespeare’s The Tempest. She is a member of the 7-ON group of playwrights.

Language Expert

Emeritus Professor Roland (Roly) Sussex has spent his life immersed in the fascinating world of language. He was awarded with a PhD in Russian and general linguistics from the University of London, and went on to teach at The University of Melbourne and The University of Queensland. Roly’s curiosity has taken him from classrooms to research to radio studios – he’s been discussing words and their wonderful journeys on ABC Radio since 1997. Since ‘retiring’ from The University of Queensland he has been happily occupied as a researcher and public intellectual.