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: Michelle de Kretser In Conversation
11AM-12PM
Join 2025 Stella Winner Michelle de Kretser in conversation with Annie O’Rourke, as they discuss Michelle’s award winning seventh novel, Theory & Practice and everything in between.
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.
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.
Jessica Alice is a writer and arts leader from Melbourne’s west.
Jessica is Artistic Director of Byron Writers Festival, based in Byron Bay. She is Chair of the National Young Writers Festival, a committee member of the Kat Muscat Fellowship, and a committee member of the MUD Literary Club.
She holds a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Cultural Leadership from NIDA—the National Institute of Dramatic Art.
Jessica was formerly Chief Executive Officer of Writers SA, the peak organisation for writing and literature in South Australia, and Chair of the Arts Industry Council of South Australia, the state’s independent, sector-wide representative arts advocacy body.
She was elected to the Arts Industry Council SA’s Executive Committee in 2019, elected Deputy Chair in 2020 and Chairperson in 2021 until early 2024.
Jessica has held roles including Program Manager of Melbourne Writers Festival, Co-Director of the National Young Writers’ Festival, in Newcastle, New South Wales, and a member of the executive leadership team at Regional Arts Victoria as Marketing & Publicity Manager.
She was previously Deputy Chair of the Melbourne International Arts Festival Shadow Board, a Board Member of SYN Media, and a member of the RMIT School of Creative Writing Programming Advisory Committee.
In 2018, Jessica was one of 20 arts leaders from Australia and Asia selected to take part in Creative Australia’s Future Leaders Program.
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.
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