We are so excited to share details of one of our panels for this year’s festival. A Crime and a Place, chaired by Marele Day in conversation with Lisa Walker, Mike Burge and Georgia Harper.
This will be a riveting session exploring how landscape, community and secrecy shape crime fiction — and how place can become as powerful as any character.
Our chair, Marele Day, is a towering figure in Australian crime writing. Author of ten books — including the much-loved Claudia Valentine crime series — Marele has won the Ned Kelly Lifetime Achievement Award and earned international acclaim for Lambs of God.
Joining Marele in conversation:
Georgia Harper
Following the success of her award-winning debut, What I would Do to You, Georgia returns with a bold and unsettling new novel Dove, sparked by a viral question: What would women do if there were no men for 24 hours?
Set in the Sunshine Coast hinterland in the early 1990s, her story unfolds when a single question painted across a permaculture farm wall unleashes buried truths, media frenzy — and ultimately, murder. It’s gripping, provocative and startlingly contemporary in its exploration of gendered violence and community tension.
Lisa Walker
Lisa’s latest novel, The Pact, takes us inside the rarefied world of an elite writing college where ambition, rivalry and secrecy collide. When a charismatic tutor is found dead, dreams unravel. Years later, a reunion on the Camino de Santiago forces old friends to confront what really happened. Dark, twisty and deliciously tense.
Mike Burge
Mike returns with Dirt Trap, a powerful sequel to Tank Water. Set in a rural Australian town reckoning with its past, the novel explores historical gay-hate crimes, institutional failure and the long shadow of silence. When a member of a notorious local family is found dead, journalist James Brandt becomes the prime suspect — and the past refuses to stay buried. It’s crime fiction with heart, courage and razor-sharp social insight.
Together, these writers will explore how crime fiction holds a mirror to our communities — how secrets ferment in small towns, how institutions fail, how ambition corrodes, and how the landscapes we inhabit shape the stories we tell.
If you love smart, layered, socially engaged crime writing — this panel is for you.