Adelaide
Adelaide – Thursday 17 July 2025
Allan Scott Auditorium, Hawke Building,
UniSA City West Campus, 55 North Terrace Adelaide
Stella Day Out is a free one-day literary festival that celebrates and promotes the outstanding contributions of women and non-binary writers to Australian literature.
This event offers the opportunity to connect outstanding authors with readers through three sessions featuring Stella Prize-listed authors Hannah Kent and Stephanie Radok, along with 2025 Stella Prize winner Michelle de Kretser.
Scroll down to register for each session. QBD Books will be selling books in the Auditorium foyer on the day of the event.
Presented by The Bob Hawke Prime Ministerial Centre and Stella
Session 1: Hannah Kent
11am – 12pm
Hannah Kent explores, with moderator Jo Case, belonging and hope through her debut non-fiction novel, Always Home, Always Homesick.
Hannah Kent’s works include the international bestseller, Burial Rites (2013), which was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction and the Stella Prize among others. She has also published several shortlisted books, including The Good People (2016) and Devotion.
Hannah lives and works on Peramangk Country in South Australia.
Register in Person | Register Live Stream
Session 2: Stephanie Radok
1pm – 2pm
Art wants to enter our lives, yet it is a rare art writer who lets it do that. Writing with full personal disclosure, Stephanie Radok lets us in on her secret. Stephanie will be in conversation with Heather Taylor Johnson.
Her first book, An Opening: Twelve Love Stories about Art (2013) was longlisted for the inaugural Stella Prize. Other published works include, Becoming A Bird: Untold Stories About Art and Under the Bed: Inventories 2020-2022.
Stephanie Radok is an artist and writer living in Adelaide on Kaurna land.
Register in Person | Register Live Stream
Session 3: Michelle de Kretser
3pm – 4pm
Michelle de Kretser, in conversation with moderator Julia Lester, discusses her seventh novel Theory & Practice – winner of the 2025 Stella Prize and described as an exceptional work of hyper realism.
An Honorary Associate in the English Department at the University of Sydney, she is a two-time winner of the Miles Franklin Literary Award and has received numerous other accolades for her fiction.
Michelle lives in Warrane/Sydney on unceded Gadigal land.
Register in Person | Register Live Stream
Hannah Kent’s first novel, the international bestseller, Burial Rites (2013), was translated into over 30 languages and won the ABIA Literary Fiction Book of the Year, the Indie Awards Debut Fiction Book of the Year, and the Victorian Premier’s People’s Choice Award. It was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction and the Guardian First Book Award, the Stella Prize, and the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, amongst others. It is currently being adapted for film by Sony TriStar.
Hannah’s second novel, The Good People (2016) has been translated into 10 languages and was shortlisted for the Walter Scott Award for Historical Fiction, the Indie Books Award for Literary Fiction, the ABIA Literary Fiction Book of the Year, and the Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction. It is currently being adapted for film by Aquarius Productions.
Hannah’s latest novel, Devotion (2021) won Booktopia’s Favourite Australian Book Award, and was shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Fiction, the Indie Book Awards for Literary Fiction, and the ABIA Literary Fiction Book of the Year. It is currently being adapted for film by Dollhouse Pictures.
Hannah’s original feature film, Run Rabbit Run, starring Sarah Snook (Succession), was directed by Daina Reid (The Handmaid’s Tale) and produced by Carver and XYZ Films. It premiered in the Midnight Section of the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, with Netflix acquiring a majority of global rights. Hannah is also writing screenplays for The Good People and Devotion.
Hannah co-founded Australian literary publication Kill Your Darlings with Rebecca Starford. She has written for The New York Times, Vogue Australia, The Saturday Paper, The Guardian, the Age, the Sydney Morning Herald, Meanjin, Qantas Magazine and LitHub.
Hannah lives and works on Peramangk Country in South Australia.
Jo Case is an Adelaide-based writer, editor and critic who is Deputy Editor, Books & Ideas at The Conversation. She has been associate publisher at Wakefield Press, deputy editor of Australian Book Review, books editor of The Big Issue and associate editor of Kill Your Darlings. A former program manager of Melbourne Writers Festival, Jo was a co-founder of the Feminist Writers Festival and a founding board member of the Stella Prize. She is the author of the memoir Boomer and Me (2013) and co-editor, with Clem Bastow, of a forthcoming anthology of essays by autistic women and gender-diverse writers for UQP. Her personal essays have been published in the anthologies Mothermorphosis (MUP, 2015) and Rebellious Daughters (Ventura Press, 2016). Her cultural criticism has been published in Age, Sydney Morning Herald, Guardian, Australian Book Review and The Monthly and she writes a monthly books column for Adelaide’s InReview.
Stephanie Radok is an artist and writer living in Adelaide on Kaurna land. Her most recent book published in April 2025 is Under The Bed / Inventories 2020-2022. Her first book An Opening: Twelve Love Stories about Art was longlisted for the inaugural Stella Prize.
Michelle de Kretser was born in Sri Lanka. She lives in Warrane/Sydney on unceded Gadigal land. An honorary associate of the English Department at the University of Sydney, she has won several awards for her fiction. Theory & Practice is her seventh novel.
Julia Lester has worked as a Radio Broadcaster and Producer, TV Current Affairs Reporter, Public Speaker, MC of events, concerts and conferences, Interviewer, News Journalist, Teacher, Actor and Musician.
Heather Taylor-Johnson lives and writes on Kaurna land near Port Adelaide. Her third novel is a work of autofiction, called Little Bit. Before that, Jean Harley was Here was shortlisted for the Readings Prize for New Fiction. Her essays on art and illness have won the Island Nonfiction Prize and been shortlisted for ABR’s Calibre Prize. Her most recent poetry books are the verse novel Rhymes with Hyenas and the collection Alternative Hollywood Ending. She is the editor of Shaping the Fractured Self: Poetry of Chronic Illness and Pain, read widely in disability circles. She is an Adjunct Research Fellow at the J M Coetzee Centre for Creative Practice.
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