Byron Bay
Byron Bay – October 17 2025
Byron Community Centre, 69 Jonson St, Byron Bay NSW 2481
We are so happy that Stella Day Out is coming to Byron Bay for the first time ever! Join us and these fabulous writers on October 17 – we can’t wait.
SCHEDULE:
Session 1: Kate Mildenhall In Conversation
11AM-12PM
Kate Mildenhall, 2024 Stella Prize Longlister, joins Annie O’Rourke for an intimate conversation about her writing career, and the possibilities of Australian fiction. Exclusively learn more about Kate’s new book The Hiding Place, ahead of it’s release at the end of the month.
You’ll have the chance to snag a copy of Kate’s 2024 Stella listed book The Hummingbird Effect, and ask Kate anything – from speculative fiction to her children’s book, to writing the Australian landscape, to careers and the ‘Stella Effect’.
Session 2: Quiet Resilience
1PM-2PM
Join Stella authors Fiona Wright and Josephine Rowe as they discuss their books and examine the female experience and fragility. Moderated by Byron Bay Writers Festival Director Jessica Alice.
Kate Mildenhall is a writer and teacher. Her debut novel, Skylarking, was named in Readings Top Ten Fiction Books of 2016 and her bestselling The Mother Fault was longlisted for the 2021 ABIA General Fiction Book of the Year and shortlisted for the 2020 Aurealis Awards. Mildenhall teaches creative writing and co-hosts The First Time podcast – which features conversations with Australian writers – and is currently undertaking a PhD in creative practice at RMIT University. Kate lives in Hurstbridge on Wurundjeri lands, with her partner and two children. Her third novel is The Hummingbird Effect. Her upcoming book The Hiding Place is released October 28.
Jessica Alice is a writer and arts leader from Melbourne’s west. She is Artistic Director of Byron Writers Festival, based in Byron Bay, and Chair of the National Young Writers Festival, in Newcastle NSW. Jessica was formerly CEO of Writers SA, the peak organisation for writing and literature in South Australia, and Chair of the Arts Industry Council of SA, the state’s independent, sector-wide representative arts advocacy body. She has held senior leadership positions in festivals and cultural organisations across Australia, including Melbourne Writers Festival and Regional Arts Victoria.
Fiona Wright is a writer, editor and critic. Her book of essays Small Acts of Disappearance won the 2016 Kibble Award and was shortlisted for the 2016 Stella Prize. Her poetry collections are Knuckled and Domestic Interior, and her most recent essay collection is The World Was Whole. She is currently the Judy Harris Writer in Residence at Sydney University’s Charles Perkins Centre, and her debut novel, Kill Your Boomers, will be published in April 2026.
Josephine Rowe is the author of three story collections and two novels, A Loving, Faithful Animal, and Little World. She has twice been named a Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Australian Novelist, and her collection Here Until August was shortlisted for the 2020 Stella Prize. Rowe’s writing has appeared in Granta, Zoetrope: All-Story, McSweeney’s, The Monthly, The Saturday Paper, Literary Hub, HEAT, and elsewhere. She is a 2021-2022 fellow of the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center at the New York Public Library, and an inaugural 2024 Ian Potter Creative Fellow. She currently lives in coastal Victoria.
Annie O’Rourke is a self-described “political refugee from Canberra,” having traded the nation’s capital for the creative calm — and occasional chaos — of the NSW Northern Rivers. After more than 20 years working in politics, she now calls Byron Bay home, where she lives with her husband, two boys, and a towering pile of books she swears she’ll get to one day. Annie is the Chief Creative Officer and Founder of 89 Degrees East, the strategic communications agency she launched over 15 years ago to help organisations tell stories that matter. A lifelong book lover, she’s currently deep in young adult fiction as she is nurturing her sons’ love of reading, but she dreams of uninterrupted afternoons lost in her own book pile.
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