Festival 2024 Lineup

Gary Lonesborough is a Yuin man, who grew up on the Far South Coast of NSW as part of a large and proud Aboriginal family. Gary was always writing as a child, and continued his creative journey when he moved to Sydney to study at film school. Gary has experience working in youth work, Aboriginal health, child protection, the disability sector (including experience working in the youth justice system) and the film industry, including working on the feature film adaptation of Jasper Jones. His debut YA novel, The Boy from the Mish, was published by Allen & Unwin in 2021. It was published in the US in 2022 under the title Ready When You Are.

Nancy Cushing is Associate Professor of History at the University of Newcastle, Australia on beautiful Awabakal and Worimi country. An environmental historian whose interests range from coal mining to human-other animal relations, she was co-editor of Animals Count: How Population Size Matters in Animal-Human Relations (Routledge 2018), co author with Kevin Markwell of Snake-bitten: Eric Worrell and the Australian Reptile Park (UNSW Press 2010) and recently took a slight diversion by writing a book on the history of crime in Australia (A History of Crime in Australia, Australian Underworlds, 2023). Her current project is A New History of Australia in 15 Animals (Bloomsbury). In 2024 and 2025, she is the Coral Thomas Fellow at the State Library of NSW, researching the non-human animals of Sydney. Nancy is on the executives of the Australian Aotearoa NZ Environmental History Network and the Australian Historical Association and a member of the NSW Working Party for the Australian Dictionary of Biography.

Dr Sally Breen is the author grunge memoir The Casuals and crime novel Atomic City. Her short form work has appeared widely nationally and internationally. Dr Breen is Executive Director of Asia Pacific Writers and Translators and Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Griffith University.

Sarah Temporal is a prize-winning poet, educator and cultural producer. Her debut collection Tight Bindings (Puncher and Wattmann, 2024) explores embodiment and storytelling. Sarah is a winner of the Bunker Slam and Nimbin Poetry World Cup, with work published in Best of Australian Poems and more. She founded Poets Out Loud to empower diverse voices through writing and spoken-word.

Siang Lu is the author of Ghost Cities and the multi-award-winning The Whitewash, which won Audiobook of the Year at the 2023 ABIAs and the Glendower Award for an emerging writer at the Queensland Literary Awards. He was named one of the Top 40 Under 40 Asian-Australians in 2023.

Grace is an Bundjalung mentor, editor and writer. She grew up mostly between northern NSW and the greater Logan/ Brisbane area. Grace is the Senior Editor at State Library of Queensland’s black&write! Indigenous Writing and Editing Project, a Board member of Byron Bay Writers Festival, and along with Camha Pham and Radhiah Chowdhury, is a founding member of the First Nations and People of Colour in Publishing Network. She was awarded the 2020 Nakata Brophy prize for poetry.

The author of over fifty books, Melaina Faranda has worked with ten publishers, scores of editors nationally and internationally, and shares invaluable writing and editing skills in ways that swiftly turns each class into an inspired writing tribe! Melaina infuses her teaching with generosity, expertise, enthusiasm, encouragement, and the kind of dynamic storied fun that consistently results in rave feedback from course participants! She conducts writing courses, workshops, masterclasses, and seminars across Australia.

Sue is a Greens MP in the NSW Upper House and an environmental law expert. Her work protecting the environment began decades ago in the old growth forests of Northeast NSW as a frontline activist. She’s also a farmer and grows dryland rice and is expanding koala habitat on her farm on the Richmond Floodplain.

Kylie Chan has a BBus, an MBA in IT, and an MPhil in Creative writing. She started out as an IT consultant specialising in business intelligence systems in Australia, and then had her own consulting business for ten years in Hong Kong. When she returned to Australia, Kylie wrote the bestselling nine-book Dark Heavens fantasy series, followed by the Dragon Empire science fiction trilogy. Her 2023 speculative novel, Minds of Sand and Light, explores the theme of artificial intelligence.

Alasdair is a multi-award winning performance poet and a battle-scarred nurse. He sings bedside on hospital wards and debrides wounds on carpeted stages. He writes and performs about what he knows and what he knows is good hand hygiene. With clean hands and honest stories; Alasdair hopes to heal heartache, recover trauma, and bandage suffering with beauty.

Andrew Spencer is a poet and short story writer from the Northern Rivers NSW. He is the director of Raised Ink Press Publications. Andrew took out the People’s Choice Award at the Nimbin Poetry World Cup 2023 with his hard hitting piece about disadvantaged youth in the far western deserts of Queensland. Andrew’s work can be found in Coastlines Anthologies, various zines and online publications. Andrew produces poetry recordings for broadcast and creates audiobooks in his spare time.

David Heilpern LLB LLM is an Australian lawyer, author and poet. After attending school in Sydney and Bathurst, and universities in Sydney, Canberra and Lismore, David became a solicitor and barrister. He acted for several high-profile clients, including North East Forest Alliance, and Nimbin HEMP. He is the author of five books, most notably For Fear of Favour: Sexual Assault of Young Prisoners, a world-first study of sexual assault in prisons, and has been an advocate of prison and law reform. In 1998 he became the youngest Magistrate in Australia. In 2004 he was awarded Southern Cross University’s Alumnus of the Decade. He is an award-winning short story writer, and is currently Dean of Law at Southern Cross University, having “retired” from the bench in 2020. He writes a syndicated column for the Byron Echo and other community newspapers, and is a regular opinion writer and guest on national media.

Ella Jeffery is a poet, editor, and critic. Her debut collection of poems, Dead Bolt, won the Puncher & Wattmann Prize for a First Book of Poems, the Anne Elder Award, and was shortlisted for the Dame Mary Gilmore Award. Her poetry has appeared widely in journals and anthologies including Best Australian Poems, Meanjin, HEAT, Griffith Review, and Island. She is the recipient of a Queensland Writers Fellowship, the Mick Dark Fellowship for Environmental Writing, and the Queensland Premier’s Young Publishers and Writers Award. She is a lecturer in creative writing at Griffith University, and lives in Brisbane.

Ivan Crozier (he/him) is a Community Health Promotion Officer working at ACON Northern Rivers in Lismore/ Widjabal Wiabal Land, where he conducts outreach aimed at ending HIV transmission and works to support the LBGTQ community.

Kevin Markwell’s boyhood hero was Eric Worrell, who’s books and articles about his adventures with reptiles provided a script for him to try and follow. In 2010, Kevin and colleague, Nancy Cushing, had their book on Worrell and his Australian Reptile Park, Snake-Bitten, published by UNSW Press. More recently, Kevin has curated an online repository of Worrell’s writings, called The Eric Worrell Archive.

Linda Woodrow is a Northern Rivers NSW based writer. Linda’s non-fiction book, The Permaculture Home Garden was published by Penguin in 1996. It is still in print and has sold over 30,000 copies. Her first novel, 470, was published by Melliodora Publishing in 2020, and has recently been published as an audiobook. It was shortlisted for the Varuna PIP and has been nominated for the NSW Premier’s Literary Award.