It's a Long Story

Nai Palm of Hiatus Kaiyote has recently been flying solo, with her debut album Needle Paw soon to be released. In spite of a turbulent childhood, she took solace in nature, in animals and in music, growing into the independent spirit and curious soul that has enchanted such artists as Erykah Badu, Animal Collective, Questlove and the late, great Prince.

Briggs is a rapper, comedian, actor, writer and fearless social critic. A proud Yorta Yorta man from regional Victoria, he took out the Australian Music Prize this year as half of the hip hop duo A.B. Original for their debut album Reclaim Australia, as well as appearing in the ABC's groundbreaking supernatural drama Cleverman and becoming a regular on satirical news programme The Weekly with Charlie Pickering.

S-Town's rich and thoughtful story telling captured the attention of audiences from around the world. Brian Reed, its host and co-creator, originally set out to find a new story for This American Life. Instead, he spent three years investigating the life and tribulations of small town Alabama resident John B. McLemore. The podcast captured audiences with the twists and turns of life in Bibb County, presenting an audio story akin to great literature.

Award-winning writer, journalist and public speaker, Thordis Elva was voted Woman of the Year in her native Iceland for her tireless campaigning for gender equality. She believes in ending the silence that still shrouds sexual violence, of which she is a survivor, and sees dialogue as a means of healing. She has long researched the effect of forgiveness in human relationships, an interest which took her across the globe and into the depths of her own heart, resulting in the book South of Forgiveness which she wrote with Tom Stranger.

Lindy West’s vibrant humour, refreshing candour and unapologetically trenchant attacks on body shamers and trolls have earned her the admiration of Lena Dunham, Ira Glass, and Caitlin Moran. What can each of us take away from the courage of someone who confronts rape jokes, the fat police, and anti-abortionists - and laughs to tell the tale?

Mei Fong is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who covered China for the Wall Street Journal for many years. Her book, "One Child", the story of China's most radical experiment details the repercussions of the one-child policy. Originally implemented to kerb population growth, the one-child policy resulted in immense suffering and hundreds of thousands of infant deaths. By the time the government announced it was ending the policy in 2015, China had a surplus of 33 million men and population numbers that were dropping drastically.

Has contemporary feminism grown so tame, cowardly and irrelevant that it barely challenges the status quo? Have feminists traded liberation for acceptance? What will it take to wake the movement up? In a fearless call for revolution, Jessa Crispin demands more of feminism - nothing less than the total dismantling of a system of oppression.

As a war correspondent, Janine di Giovanni has spent the last 30 years covering stories in the most dangerous places on earth. She first reported from Palestine in the late 1980's and has covered almost every major conflict area since - most recently working in Syria.

Her book, The Morning They Came For Us, tells a sequence of powerful and harrowing stories about the effect of the Syrian Civil War on ordinary people. Of her work Janine has said, 'I'm deluded if I think that what I do as a journalist can stop war, all I am is a witness, my role is to bring a voice to people who are voiceless.'

Microbiologist Giulia Enders is seriously into guts. So into guts in fact, that she's been the catalyst for a global movement to encourage people to understand their insides and to not be afraid of talking about them. Her book, Gut: The Inside Story of Our Body's Most Underrated Organ has sold well over one million copies in her native Germany and been published in over 30 different languages.

When Geena Davis was three years old she announced to her parents that she was going to be in movies.  In fact, the quote in her high school year book was "Future plans: go to the big city and become a star."

Fast forward some years and she's so much more. Fronting the Women's Sports Foundation and launching the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media - to name just a few accomplishments.