The Women To Watch In 2018

This Australia actress, 25, stole the show in our favourite film of 2017, Patti Cake$, in which she played an aspiring rapper from Jersey. In 2018, she’ll star in White Girl Problems – based on Babe Walker’s novel about a woman trying to come to terms with her shopping addiction (ie: all of us). Then she’ll play Jennifer Aniston’s daughter in Dumplin’ – a musical comedy about a schoolgirl who enters a beauty pageant to win over the boy she likes (ie: our dream film).

We haven’t stopped listening to Vera Blue’s debut album Perennial since it dropped in July. The flame-haired singer, 23, will play at the Australian Open in January – and we’ve got money on her dominating Triple J’s Hottest 100 this year. Vote Mended #1.

Critics have called Emma Glass’s debut novel Peach a “work of genius” and “impossible to categorise, intimately weird and exhilaratingly bold.” You’ll want to get your hands on this book as soon as it comes out in February (Bloomsbury, $24.99). 

We hate to say “I told you so,” but we totally did. Natasha Liu Bordizzo appeared in our Rising Stars feature back in 2016 after the Sydney-born actress was scouted at a train station on her way to uni. Fast-forward three years and Bordizzo’s star has well and truly risen, with a role in Hugh Jackman’s Boxing Day blockbuster The Greatest Showman and the upcoming Hotel Mumbai with Dev Patel.

In 2017, Australian model Zoe Barnard fronted campaigns for David Jones, macgraw and Stuart Weitzman. Mark it in your diaries: 2018 will be Barnard’s year. The fresh-faced 19-year-old will make you wish you were born with freckles, or atleast, make you consider drawing them on.

Back in 2014, every single girl on Instagram posted a selfie with the First Aid Kit lyrics: “I don’t know if I’m scared of dying, but I’m scared of living too fast too slow.” Prepare for caption gold when the Australian folk duo release their fourth studio album RUINS on January 19.

Writer, actor and playwright Michelle Law will debut her brand-new online series Homecoming Queens on SBS OnDemand this year. Co-created with Chloe Reeson, the series follows two twenty-something women with chronic illnesses based on Reeson’s breast cancer diagnosis and Law’s own experiences with alopecia. If anyone can make sickness funny – it’s Law.

Bettina Buffe, a miniature pinscher, made her Instagram debut in November last year and already has more followers than you. The dog of fashion blogger Bryanboy, we’re expecting big things from Buffe in 2018. Big things!