Join award-winning authors Emily O’Grady, Kristina Olsson and Mirandi Riwoe for the first session of the day as they have an invigorating discussion about the stages of an author’s career. 

Reserve a spot here.

Emily O’Grady’s debut novel, The Yellow House, won the 2018 Vogel Literary Award and was shortlisted for the 2019 Ned Kelly Award for Best First Fiction. Her second novel, Feast (Allen & Unwin) was published in 2023 and longlisted for the Dublin Literary Award and shortlisted for the Stella Prize. In 2024 she was named as a Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Australian Novelist.  

Kristina Olsson is a journalist and the award-winning author of the novels Shell, In One Skin, and The China Garden, and two works of nonfiction, Boy, Lost: A Family Memoir and Kilroy was Here. She lives in Brisbane, Australia.

Mirandi Riwoe is the author of crime, literary and historical fiction novels including Stone Sky Gold Mountain, and her latest book Sunbirds. She has been shortlisted for the Stella prize twice and longlisted for the Miles Franklin as well as winning numerous other awards including the inaugural ARA Historical Fiction prize. 

Join authors Kris Kneen and Laura Jean McKay as they unravel the mysterious art of poetry and short stories. This panel will be moderated by Raelee Lancaster.

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Kris Kneen is the award-winning author of memoir: Affection, The Three Burials of Lotty Kneen and Fat Girl Dancinhg and their fiction titles: An Uncertain Grace, Steeplechase, Triptych, The Adventures of Holly White and the Incredible Sex Machine, Wintering, as well as the Thomas Shapcott Award-winning poetry collection Eating My Grandmother. They have written and directed broadcast documentaries for SBS and ABC Television.

Raelee Lancaster is a writer/librarian based in Brisbane. Her creative writing crosses poetry, memoir, essay, criticism, and playwriting. She’s written for The Guardian, SBS Voices, The Griffith Review, The Big Issue, and more. As a librarian, Raelee’s research paper “Fact or Folklore? An Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Framework to Cataloguing Indigenous Knowledge” was published in the Journal of the Australian Library and Information Association. Raised on Awabakal land, Raelee is descended from the Wiradjuri and Biripi people.

Laura Jean McKay is the author of The Animals in That Country – winner of the prestigious Arthur C Clarke Award, The Victorian Prize for Literature, the ABIA Small Publishers Adult Book of the Year and co-winner of the Aurealis Award for Best Science Fiction Novel 2021. The Animals in That Country has been shortlisted for The Kitschies, The Stella Prize, The Readings Prize and the ASL Gold Medal and longlisted for the Miles Franklin Award. Laura is also the author of Holiday in Cambodia and an Adjunct Lecturer in Creative Writing at Massey University. She was awarded the NZSA Waitangi Day Literary Honours in 2022. Her latest collection is Gunflower, named one of The Guardian’s best books of 2023.

Join award-winning authors Debra Dank and Anita Heiss as they explore the vital topic of reclaiming and revitalising First Nations languages. This session will be moderated by Cheryl Leavy. 

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Debra Dank is a Gudanji/Wakaja woman, married to Rick, with three adult children and two grandchildren. An educator, she has worked in teaching and learning for many years – a gift given through the hard work of her parents. She continues to experience the privilege of living with country and with family. Debra completed her PhD in Narrative Theory and Semiotics at Deakin University in 2021. Debra’s memoir We Come with This Place, was shortlisted for the Stella Prize in 2023 among many other prestigious nominations. 

Dr Anita Heiss is an internationally published, award-winning author of 23 books; non-fiction, historical fiction, commercial women’s fiction and children’s novels. She is a proud member of the Wiradyuri Nation of central New South Wales, an Ambassador for the Indigenous Literacy Foundation and the GO Foundation, and Professor of Communications at the University of Queensland. Anita is also the Publisher at Large of Bundyi, an imprint of Simon & Schuster cultivating First Nations talent, and a board member of the National Justice Project and Circa Contemporary Circus. As an artist in residence at La Boite Theatre, she adapted her novel Tiddas for the stage. It premiered at the 2022 Brisbane Festival and was produced by Belvoir St for the Sydney Festival in 2024. Her novel, Bila Yarrudhanggalangdhuray, about the Great Flood of Gundagai, won the 2022 NSW Premier’s Indigenous Writers’ Prize and was shortlisted for the 2021 ARA Historical Novel Prize and the 2022 ABIA Awards. Anita’s first children’s picture book is Bidhi Galing (Big Rain), also about the Great Flood of Gundagai. Anita enjoys running, eating chocolate and being a creative disruptor.

Cheryl Leavy is from the Kooma and Nguri Nations in western and central Queensland. A poet, Cheryl was the 2022 winner of the Oodgeroo Noonuccal Poetry Prize. Several commissions followed, including for Camerata – Queensland’s chamber orchestra, Red Room’s Poetry Month, 2023, and most recently poetry activations for Daniel Boyd’s Rainbow Serpent (Version) at the Institute of Modern Art and Judy Watson’s exhibition at Queensland Art Gallery. Cheryl was a proud recipient of the inaugural FNAWN Varuna Residency Fellowships for 2024 to work on her poetry manuscript, Mudunja – Song Country. Cheryl’s first children’s book, Yanga Mother, written in Kooma and translated to English, will be published by UQP this year, with her second, For You Country, in 2025. Cheryl often writes in her Kooma language and is passionate about its revitalisation. Cheryl has enjoyed a long career in the arts and cultural sector, serving on many boards, including for the Brisbane Writers Festival, where she established and co-chaired the First Nations Advisory Committee. Cheryl has also achieved notable success in First Nations policy and rights advocacy, with her most recent focus on environmental and land justice.

1pm – 2pm | Exploring hope and trust in fiction

Award-winning author Amanda Lohrey sits down with poet and editor Michelle Cahill to talk about hope and trust in literature.

Michelle Cahill (she/they)

Michelle is a poet and novelist of Indian heritage. She is the 2023 Hedberg Writer-in-Residence. Her short story collection Letter to Pessoa was awarded the NSW Premier’s Literary Award for New Writing. Her novel Daisy & Woolf was longlisted in the ALS Gold Medal and the Voss Literary Prize. She has been shortlisted in the ABR Elizabeth Jolley Prize, the Peter Porter Poetry Prize and received the KWS Hilary Mantel International Short Story Prize. Cahill is the artistic director of Mascara. 

Amanda Lohrey (she/her)

Amanda lives in Tasmania and writes fiction. In November 2012 she received the 2012 Patrick White Award for literature. Her 2020 novel The Labyrinth won the 2021 Miles Franklin Award, the Voss Award for fiction, the Prime Minister’s Award for fiction and the Tasmanian Literary Award for fiction. Her most recent publication is a novel, The Conversion (2023). In 2022, Melbourne University Press published a critical study of her work, Lohrey, by Dr Julieanne Lamond of the Australian National University.

Hear the 2017 Stella Prize winner, Heather Rose, reflect on her stunning novel The Museum of Modern Love and her latest book Nothing Bad Ever Happens Here. 

Heather Rose (she/her)

Heather is the author of nine novels and a memoir. Heather’s books have been shortlisted, longlisted or won awards for literary fiction, crime fiction, fantasy/sci fi and children’s literature. Her seventh novel, The Museum of Modern Love, won the 2017 Stella Prize, the Christina Stead Prize and the Margaret Scott Prize. It has been widely translated. Heather’s most recent novel Bruny won the ABIA 2020 General Fiction Book of the Year and is currently in production as a six-part tv series. The Museum of Modern Love is being adapted for film. The play of The Museum of Modern Love, written by Tom Holloway, debuted at the 2022 Sydney Festival. Heather’s latest book is the memoir Nothing Bad Ever Happens Here. Heather’s next novel will be published in late 2024.

Danielle Wood (she/her)

Danielle is the author of the Vogel Prize-winning novel The Alphabet of Light and Dark, Rosie Little’s Cautionary Tales for Girls, Housewife Superstar: the very best of Marjorie Bligh and Mothers Grimm. As ‘Minnie Darke’, she’s written the novels Star-crossed, The Lost Love Song, and With Love from Wish & Co, and the novellas Wild Apples and The Yellow Wood. With Heather Rose, she is ‘Angelica Banks’, author of the Tuesday McGillycuddy books for children. She is also the co-editor of two anthologies of Tasmanian writing, Deep South: Stories from Tasmania and Island Story: Tasmania in Object and Text. She lives in Hobart and teaches writing at the University of Tasmania.