SATURDAY 18 OCTOBER 2025
TATHRA HALL
FAMILY, DISPOSSESSION & DIASPORA
Samah Sabawi & Sara M Saleh with Tyson Yunkaporta - 9:30am - 10:30am, TATHRA HALL
In the wake of conflicts in the Middle East, Palestinian families have been forced to flee their homes and seek refuge both in neighbouring countries and across the world. Samah Sabawi and Sara M Saleh join Tyson Yunkaporta to discuss their family histories, changing identities and the Palestinian diaspora in Australia.
TYSON YUNKAPORTA
Tyson Yunkaporta’s bestselling Sand Talk and Right Story, Wrong Story cast an Indigenous lens on contemporary society. Snake Talk is the third book in this trilogy. Co-authored with Megan Kelleher, Snake Talk explores Indigenous thinking through the symbol of serpent, a common foundational narrative. Snake myths echo from a time before truth, and retain the capacity, at this inflection point in history where truth is daily manipulated by bad actors, to unify, humble and inspire us.
The serpent in Australian Aboriginal stories is both a creator and destroyer, dwelling in the liminal spaces between physical and spiritual worlds, story and history. What if this ancient lore extended around the globe? What if the creation stories of the Basilisk, Wyvern, Naga, Quetzalcoatl and many others carried secrets that might help resolve global issues of existential crisis?
In this exhilarating book, the authors speak to elders from Kathmandu to Aotearoa to South America and Europe about a pluriverse of serpent stories, seeking answers to the age-old riddle of how to align the genius of our species with the regenerative patterns of creation. They speak to the makers—the artists and craftspeople who keep the sacred lore of these serpent entities in the ritual images and objects they create.
WITHIN THESE WALLS
Luke Horton & Sofie Laguna with Jodie Stewart
11:00am - 12:00pm, TATHRA HALL
How do the houses we grow up in shape our relationships with our families and ourselves? Authors Sofie Laguna and Luke Horton discuss how our childhood homes can become places of both isolation and connection and be vessels for hurt, memory and our future selves.
LUKE HORTON
Luke Horton is a writer and musician from Naarm/Melbourne. He is the author of two critically acclaimed novels, The Fogging (2020) and Time Together (2025), and his work has appeared in various publications, including The Guardian, The Saturday Paper, and Meanjin. The former editor of The Lifted Brow Review of Books, he currently teaches creative writing at RMIT and the Faber Writing Academy, and is a member of acclaimed indie-rock band Love of Diagrams.
SOFIE LAGUNA
Sofie Laguna has written four novels for adults which have won numerous literary awards including the Miles Franklin Award, the Colin Roderick Award and the Indie Award. Titles include ‘The Eye of the Sheep’, ‘The Choke’ and ‘Infinite Splendours’. She has also been shortlisted for the Stella Prize, the ALS Gold Medal, the Voss Award, the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award and the Prime Minister’s Literary Award. Sofie’s many books for children have been published in the US and the UK and in translation in Europe and Asia, and been named Honour and Notable Books by the Children’s Book Council of Australia. Titles include: Our Australian Girl: The Grace Stories, Too Loud Lily (enjoying its 21-year anniversary edition), and more recently, The Song of Lewis Carmichael, and The Glow, and the picture books, The House on Pleasant Street, and A Friend for Ruby, all illustrated by her husband, Marc McBride. This year Sofie will release a new picture book illustrated by Jess Racklyeft, The Last Egg, and her fifth novel for adults, The Underworld.
JODIE STEWART
Jodie Stewart is a self-described Cat Historian with an obsessive love of cats and Australian archives. She has a PhD in history from the University of Wollongong, and teaches classes in Australian and modern European history. Her first book about cat companionship in Australia’s past will be published in 2026 via HarperCollins imprint ABC Books. Jodie lives on Djiringanj country (Merimbula) with her two cats, Poppy-girl and Catty; and Luna, the very naughty bulldog.
DESTINATION MURDER
Sulari Gentill & Toby Schmitz with Eddie Williams 1:30pm - 2:30pm, TATHRA HALL
All aboard and set sail as we embark on a tantalising voyage of mystery, murder and sinister literary machinations. Your cruise director & conductor for this session will be Eddie Williams from ABC South East NSW, who will take you on a guided tour of the luxurious ocean liner, Empress of Australia and the iconic Orient Express and discuss with authors Toby Schmitz and Sulari Gentill, why it might be a good idea to stay in your cabin for the remainder of your journey.
SULARI GENTILL
Now published in English in Australia, New Zealand, the UK and the US, and in the translation in more than a dozen territories, Sulari Gentill began her writing life with the multi-award-winning Rowland Sinclair Mysteries, ten historical crime novels (thus far) chronicling the life and adventures of her 1930s Australian gentleman artist. In 2018, Sulari Gentill wrote her first departure from historical crime fiction and classical retellings, with a contemporary post-modern tale titled After She Wrote Him. The novel won the Ned Kelly Award and was shortlisted for the Davitt Award. The Woman in the Library, a standalone metafiction, was published in 2022, and became a USA Today Bestseller. It was nominated for an Edgar Award (US), was an Amazon Editor’s Pick, a number 1 LibraryReads Pick, and won the CrimeFictionLover Award (UK). The Mystery Writer was released in 2024 and won the 2025 Mary Higgins Clark Award (US), was selected as one of Bookbub’s Best Mysteries and Thrillers of 2024, was an Amazon Editor’s Pick, a LibraryReads pick for March, and an Amazon Best Book of March. Five Found Dead will be published in the US, UK and Australia in August 2025. It is a LibraryReads pick for the month of August
EDDIE WILLIAMS
Eddie presents Breakfast on ABC South East.
Born and bred in Victoria, he spent several years in commercial radio in Canberra before moving to Broome to present Mornings on ABC Kimberley and Pilbara.
You can often find him reading Australian crime fiction or looking for a new sport to try.
RAPTURE
Emily Maguire In Conversation with Lisa Markham 3:00pm - 4:00pm, TATHRA HALL
EMILY MAGUIRE
Emily Maguire is the author of seven novels and three non-fiction books. Her novel An Isolated Incident was shortlisted for the Stella Prize and the Miles Franklin Literary Award, and her 2022 book Love Objects was shortlisted for the ABIA Literary Fiction Book of the Year. She was the 2018/2019 Writer-in-Residence at the Charles Perkins Centre at the University of Sydney and the 2023 HC Coombs Creative Arts Fellow at the Australian National University and a 2025 Roderick Fellow at James Cook University. Emily has an MA in literature and works as a mentor to young and emerging writers. Her latest book is the novel, Rapture, which was longlisted for the Stella Prize and shortlisted for the ABIA Literary fiction book of the year.
LISA MARKHAM
Lisa Markham is the Editor at ABC South East. She is in her third decade of working in media and loves a good story in any form.
THE LONG AND SHORT OF IT: History's balancing act Linda Jaivin & Mark McKenna with Prof Anna Clark 4:30pm - 5:30pm, SAT 18, TATHRA HALL
How do you tell the story of an entire country and its people in a single, concise volume? Whose stories do you tell? Whose do you omit? Historians Linda Jaivin and Mark McKenna sit down with Dr Anna Clark to talk about the challenges in writing the shortest histories of Australia, China and the Cultural Revolution.
LINDA JAIVIN
Linda Jaivin is the internationally published author of thirteen books, including a Quarterly Essay, and is the co-editor with Geremie Barmé of the translation anthology New Ghosts, Old Dreams: Chinese Rebel Voices. Linda studied Chinese history and language at university, and lived, studied and worked in Taiwan, Hong Kong and China for a total of nine years. She has been a hospital filing clerk, a petrol station attendant, a China correspondent, essayist, cultural commentator, travel writer, and editor and translates the subtitles for one or two Chinese films a year. Her historical novel A Most Immoral Woman was set in China and Japan against the backdrop of the Russo-Japanese War, and The Empress Lover was set in China as well. Her The Shortest History of China, has been translated and published in two dozen countries. Her most recent book is Bombard the Headquarters! The Cultural Revolution in China, and delves into one of modern Chinese history’s darkest, most violent periods and exposes the dangers of authoritarian rule – a relevant theme for today’s world. She is currently working on The Shortest History of Madrid, which along with Beijing and Canberra, is one of her favourite capital cities. She lives in Sydney.
MARK MCKENNA
Mark McKenna is one of Australia’s leading historians. He is the author of From the Edge: Australia’s Lost Histories (MUP, 2016), which won the NSW Premier’s Prize for Australian History; An Eye for Eternity: The life of Manning Clark (MUP 2011) which won five national awards, including the Prime Minister’s Prize for Non-Fiction (2012). Looking for Blackfellas’ Point: An Australian History of Place (UNSW Press) which won the Book of the Year and the Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-Fiction in the 2003 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards; and Return to Uluru (Black Inc. 2021), which was shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s Prize for Australian History. His most recent book is The Shortest History of Australia, Black Inc. 2025.
PROF ANNA CLARK
Anna Clark is an award-winning historian, author and public commentator. An internationally recognised scholar in Australian history, history education and the role of history in everyday life, Anna’s most recent books are The Catch: Australia’s Love Affair with Fishing (Penguin 2023) and Making Australian History (Penguin 2022). She is the creator and executive producer of the popular kids’ podcast, Hey History!, and is currently Professor of History at the University of Technology Sydney.
TATHRA UNITING CHURCH
THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT
Jade Timms & Pip Harry with Gabbie Stroud
9:30am - 10:30am, TATHRA UNITING CHURCH
Seventeen-year-old Eddie and fourteen-year-old Nate may live within the pages of two different novels but they are both sensitive, thoughtful teens facing the real challenges of adolescence. Authors Jade Timms and Pip Harry sit down with Gabbie Stroud to talk about the mental and emotional strains of living in a not-so-perfect world.
JADE TIMMS
JADE TIMMS has been writing young adult novels for over fifteen years and reading any book she can get her hands on. She lives with her family on the far south coast of NSW, surrounded by kangaroos, cockatoos, and gum trees. She has a degree in archaeology, a Diploma in Library Services and once spent a year working in a fine art store. She recently completed a Graduate Diploma in Children’s Literature at Deakin University. She currently works in a tiny beachside library and squeezes her writing practice into early mornings and late nights. Golden, her debut novel, was shortlisted for the Text Prize in 2023 and was published by Text Publishing in 2025.
PIP HARRY
Pip Harry is an award-winning author, copywriter and journalist who loves to write for children and teens about kindness, friendship and courage. Her middle grade novel The Little Wave won the 2020 CBCA Book of the Year Award for Younger Readers and her follow up, August & Jones won the 2023 CBCA Shadow Judging Book of the Year, voted by school students. Pip's latest books are Over or Under? The Inside Dog and Drift, a young adult novel in verse. She lives on Sydney’s northern beaches with her family and energetic kelpie. Her favourite thing to do is swim in the ocean.
GABBIE STROUD
GABBIE STROUD is a freelance writer and novelist and recovering teacher. After years of juggling the demands of the primary classroom, she made the painful decision to leave the profession she had loved. In 2016, her critical commentary of Australia’s education system was published in Griffith Review’s Edition 51 Fixing the System, which went on to be shortlisted for a Walkley Award. Gabbie’s smash-hit memoir Teacher was shortlisted for Biography Book of the Year at the 2018 ABIA Awards and continues to contribute to the national dialogue on education. In 2020 her book, Dear Parents, offered a passionate call to arms for all parents. Gabbie’s first novel, a Young Adult fiction—Measuring Up—was published by Scribe in 2009. The Things That Matter Most was her debut fiction for adults, further exploring teacher-life. Now, Gabbie's working on something very new and different, due out with publishers Allen & Unwin in 2026. Gabbie lives on Yuin Nation on the far south coast of New South Wales, with her gorgeous husband Clint and her totally awesome daughters—Olivia and Sophie.
AFTER AMERICA
Hugh White & Linda Jaivin with Isla Evans
11:00am - 12:00pm, TATHRA UNITING CHURCH
We in Australia are beneficiaries of a post World War II rules-based order. With America's erosion of this values-based system, their gradual retreat from global leadership and the rise of China in the Pacific region, what will become of our relative safety and prosperity? Hugh White and Linda Jaivin sit down with Isla Evans to discuss our new political reality.
HUGH WHITE
Professor Hugh White AO FASSA is Emeritus Professor of Strategic Studies at the Australian National University in Canberra. He spent much of his career in the Australian Government, including as Chief of Staff to Defence Minster Kim Beazley, International Relations Advisor to Prime Minister Bob Hawke and Deputy Secretary for Strategy in the Department of Defence. He was the principal author of the 2000 Defence White Paper. After leaving government he was the founding Director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, and then Head of ANU’s Strategic and Defence Studies Centre. His major publications include three Quarterly Essays, Power Shift: Australia’s future between Washington and Beijing [2010], Without America: Australia’s future in the New Asia [2017], and Sleepwalk to War: Australia’s Unthinking Alliance with America [2022], and two books, The China Choice: Why America should share power [2012], and How to defend Australia [2019]. In the 1970s he studied philosophy at the universities of Melbourne and Oxford. In 2022 he was awarded an Honorary D.Litt by ANU.
ISLA EVANS
Isla Evans is a reporter with ABC south east NSW.
THE COST OF INHERITANCE
Omar Musa & Winnie Dunn with Adara Enthaler 1:30pm - 2:30pm, TATHRA UNITING CHURCH
OMAR MUSA
Omar Musa is an author, visual artist and poet from Queanbeyan, Australia. He has released two novels, three books of poetry (including Killernova), five hip-hop records, and two acclaimed plays, Since Ali Died and The Offering (with Mariel Roberts Musa). His work has appeared in The Best Australian Stories and Best of Australian Poems. His debut novel Here Come the Dogs was long-listed for the International Dublin Literary Award and Miles Franklin Award and he was named one of the Sydney Morning Herald’s Young Novelists of the Year in 2015. He has had several solo exhibitions of his woodcuts, including his most recent collection All My Memories Are Mistranslations. He is based between Borneo and Brooklyn.
WINNIE DUNN
Winnie Dunn is Tongan-Australian writer from Mount Druitt. She is the general manager of Sweatshop Literacy Movement and the editor of several acclaimed anthologies, including Brownface (Cordite, 2018), Sweatshop Women (Sweatshop, 2019), Straight-Up Islander (SBS, 2020) and Another Australia (Affirm Press, 2022). Winnie's debut novel, Dirt Poor Islanders (Hachette 2024) won the 2025 Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Novelists Award and the 2025 Creative Australia Kathleen Mitchell Award. Dirt Poor Islanders was also shortlisted for two NSW Premier’s Literary Awards and longlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award.
ADARA ENTHALER
Adara Enthaler is a spoken word poet and community arts organiser working on Dharawal land in Wollongong. She has worked in the literary arts for over a decade, including for the South Coast Readers & Writers Festival, Word Travels, Wollongong Writers Festival, BAD Sydney Crime Writers Festival and Feminist Writers Festival. Adara is the host of Enough Said Poetry Slam and co-organiser of the Strange Folds Zine Fair, and has MC'd events across the Greater Sydney area, including Culture Mix Festival, Illawarra Folk Festival and book launches. She has featured at festivals and poetry slams across NSW, and her writing has appeared in numerous anthologies from Baby Teeth Journal and Heroines Festival, as well as her poetry zines Equidistant (2018) and Crowdsourced Poems (2022).
DINGO: The true story of Australia's most maligned native animal
Roland Breckwoldt In Conversation with Floss Adams, 3:00pm - 4:00pm, TATHRA UNITING CHURCH
Environmental researcher Roland Breckwoldt began studying dingoes in the eighties, rearing them as pups and studying their life cycle on his property in Tantawangalo. Since the early days of the colony, dingoes have been the scapegoat of the livestock industry which claims they are not genuine native animals but just feral domestic dogs. Roland sits down with Floss Adams to talk about the ongoing efforts to manage and protect this native species.
ROLAND BRECKWOLDT
Roland began his working life as ringer on large cattle stations in the Gulf of Carpentaria and central Queensland.He spent three happy years with horses, cattle and wildlife before being being inveigled by his mother to get and education. University studies led to a Visiting Fellowship at the Australian National University where he wrote Wildlife in the Home Paddock and when published in 1983 was shortlisted for the Premiers Literary Awards and won a Royal Zoological Society Whitley Medal. For that he was also made a Fellow of the University of New England. His next book A Very Elegant Animal the Dingo won the Best Reference Book category in the 1989 Royal Zoological Society Whitley Medal. He then wrote The Dirt Doctors for the Soil Conservation Service that was an engaging political and organisational history of natural resource management and now held in many overseas libraries. Roland became a consultant in natural resource management and has traveled to all parts of Australia and the Torres Strait, to some remote areas many times over. Much of his work was with Aboriginal people. He has sat on many government boards and committees of inquiry His writing now includes a highly successful memoir The New Ringer and a very recent (July 29, 2025) on an entirely new perspective on the dingo.
THEATRE LIVES
Toby Schmitz & Samah Sabawi with Campion Decent
4:30pm - 5:30pm, TATHRA UNITING CHURCH
Authors Samah Sabawi and Toby Schmitz are also award-winning playwrights. Here they sit down with Dr Campion Decent to discuss their work in the theatre, including the art of adaptation (from literature or life), the collaborative call of the stage, and how one artistic discipline informs another.
CAMPION DECENT
Now residing in Candelo, Campion Decent is an award-winning playwright and dramaturg. His plays include Unprecedented, Embers, The Campaign, Unholy Ghosts and Baby X. He has also been Artistic Director, HotHouse Theatre; Literary Manager, Sydney Theatre Company; Artistic Director, Next Wave Festival; and Festival Director, Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras.
WORKSHOPS, TATHRA BEACH HOUSE
*WORKSHOPS ARE NOT INCLUDED IN THE WEEKEND OR DAY PASSES
POETRY WORKSHOP - BETWEEN THE LINES
David Stavanger - 9:30am - 12:00pm, TATHRA BEACH HOUSE
An accessible introductory poetry workshop for anyone looking for immediate ways to start writing poetry. Participants will explore some techniques to transform the day-to-day experience onto the page via constraint-based writing experiments, word play, and prompts, focusing on the art of the image and utilising observation of daily details to document (and distill) life within the form (and frame) of a poem. Drawing on his collections Case Notes and The Drop Off, award-winning poet David Stavanger will lead a series of brief structured exercises and discussions in a small group setting. Limited places, no previous poetry experience needed