SUNDAY 18 OCTOBER 2025

TATHRA HALL

NO LAUGHING MATTER
Lucy Nelson & Rhett Davis with Myoung Jae Yi 9:30am - 10:30am, TATHRA HALL

How does humour liberate us from situations that could otherwise leave us feeling heart-broken and without hope? From the disconnection and ennui of modern-day life in Rhett Davis’ novel Arborescence, to the complexities surrounding motherhood and childlessness in Lucy Nelson’s short story collection, Wait Here, the use of humour provides both insight and compassion to help deal with our most difficult of situations. The authors are joined by the festival’s creative director, Myoung Jae Yi.

LUCY NELSON

Lucy Nelson is a writer of fiction and non fiction. Her work has been published in Meanjin, Kill Your Darlings, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Big Issue, Southword and elsewhere. She has received the Newcastle Short Story Award, the Writing NSW Varuna Fellowship, the Templeberg Fellowship from Writers Victoria and was shortlisted for the Seán Ó Faoláin International Short Story Prize. Formerly, Lucy led Word on the Street, a creative writing education program run by Upbeat Arts for adults experiencing disadvantage or disability. She cut her community arts teeth in the early years of You Are Here Festival, filling empty city spaces with weird and beautiful art, hosting a community radio show for emerging writers and co-founding the Canberra chapter of global dance community No Lights No Lycra. She studied Professional Writing and Editing at RMIT in Melbourne. She is represented by Shaw Literary Agency. Wait Here is her first book. She lives on unceded Dharawal and Wodi Wodi Country, where she is currently at work on a novel.

RHETT DAVIS

Rhett Davis is the author of Arborescence, a novel about what trees might do if we weren’t careful. His first novel, Hovering, won the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript and was shortlisted for the Readings New Australian Fiction Prize and the Aurealis Award for Science Fiction. He has an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia and a PhD from Deakin University. Rhett has also been a manager, a consultant, a business analyst, a bookseller, and a writing and literature academic. He lives, works and writes mostly on Wadawurrung land in Geelong.

MYOUNG JAE YI

Myoung Jae Yi is the Creative Director of the annual Headland Writers Festival in Tathra, NSW. First established in 2021, the festival has brought some of Australia’s most respected authors, poets, thinkers and performers to the Far South Coast of NSW. Myoung is also a Producer at ABC South East NSW.

TRUTH-TELLING: DJIRRINGANJ COUNTRY
Ellen Mundy, David Dixon & Marcus Mundy with Mark McKenna - 11:00am - 12:00pm, TATHRA HALL

What is the difference between truth-telling as a way of dealing with the past versus something that has ongoing daily consequences in the lives of Indigenous Australians? In this first of many truth-telling sessions as we shift around the region, we begin by asking Djirringanj elders Ellen Mundy and David Dixon about their own personal and family histories and what truth-telling means to them. They will be joined by young leader and local teacher Marcus Mundy and historian Mark McKenna.

MARCUS MUNDY

I became a father at 16 and by the age of 22 I had three children. I have worked in Education from the age of 18 - 14 almost 15 years in total . Most of those years I have worked as an Aboriginal Education Officer and spent some time working in corporate as an Aboriginal Community Liaison Officer for the Batemans Bay Education Officer. Growing up I spent and sat around my elders learning the true history of my people, the good and the bad. I have been privileged enough to have been given many opportunities, many that my aunties, uncles and elders never got. I have found a passion in language revival and have been highly involved in the creation of the Djirringanj Language Resource.

ELLEN MUNDY

Ellen Munday is a proud biological descendant and Elder of the Djirringanj and Ngarigu Tribes of Southeastern Australia. She is an educator, storyteller, cultural consultant, and language revivalist who carries a rich and powerful ancestral lineage through both her biological mother and father’s tribal bloodlines. Her heritage stretches across the southeastern corner of Australia from EastGippsland to Melbourne Far South coast of NSW and connecting her to the Gooyangul South Tribes—a kinship network bound by ancient law, lore, language, and responsibility.

DAVID DIXON

David Dixon is a proud Djiringanj and Ngarigu man. He was born in Bega and has continued to live and work in the Bega valley with his family. He’s always been interested in local history, especially history regarding his family and is passionate about Djiringanj and Ngarigo culture and history. He has worked in local social services for NGO’s and government, working in the areas of youth, homelessness and housing. He has held management positions and completed his Associate Degree in Management at NSW South Western Sydney TAFE Business Faculty. He has also given his knowledge and experience to local community organisations regarding governance committees & boards, mentoring & coaching and restoration of our local culture. Since his 20’s, he has participated in public speaking events to bring awareness and education about local history, culture and truth telling.

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.

TRUTH-TELLING BREAKOUT SESSION (FREE, PLEASE REGISTER)
12:00pm - 1:00pm, *TATHRA UNITING CHURCH

Audience members from the Truth-telling: Djirringanj Country session are invited to join Ellen Mundy, David Dixon, Marcus Mundy and Mark McKenna for an informal gathering. Come and share your stories and be part of the community.

ESSAYS FROM A CREATIVE LIFE
Quentin Sprague In Conversation with Kim Mahood
1:30pm - 2:30pm, TATHRA HALL

Authors Kim Mahood and Quentin Sprague are known for their non-fiction writing about the various obsessions of the creative life. Join them for a discussion about the tangible and intangible aspects of creativity, and what must be left unsaid – indeed may be unsayable – when turning art and the human encounters it engenders into prose.

QUENTIN SPRAGUE

Quentin Sprague is the author of The Stranger Artist, which won the 2021 Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Nonfiction, and a monograph on the late Australian painter Ken Whisson. His art criticism appears widely, including regularly in The Monthly, as well as in monographs and exhibition catalogues published by the National Gallery of Victoria, Monash University Museum of Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia. He has worked variously as a curator, an academic, an art coordinator and an artist, and lives in Canberra, on Ngunnawal Country, where he is the inaugural Hassall Writers' Fellow at the Australian National University's Drill Hall Gallery.

KIM MAHOOD

Kim Mahood is an award-winning writer and visual artist. She is the author of three works of non-fiction; Craft for a Dry Lake (Random House 2000), winner of the Age Book of the Year and the NSW Premier’s prize; Position Doubtful – Mapping Landscape and Memory (Scribe 2016), which received multiple short-listings; and Wandering with Intent (Scribe 2022), which also won the Age Book of the Year for non-fiction. Her essays have been published in art, literary and public affairs journals, and her artwork is held in state, territory and regional collections. She has worked as a writer and consultant on national Indigenous art exhibitions, including the Canning Stock Route Art Project and Songlines for the National Museum of Australia. She continues to develop cross-cultural mapping projects with Aboriginal organisations in remote, regional and urban Australia. Her mapping work is designed to foster communication and understanding between traditional custodians of country and the non-Indigenous stakeholders with an interest in the same country.

SNAKE TALK: How the world’s ancient serpent stories can guide us
Tyson Yunkaporta & Megan Kelleher with Mark McKenna - 3:00pm - 4:00pm, TATHRA HALL

From Kathmandu to Aotearoa, from Mesoamerica to China to northern Europe and Australia, the serpent plays an important role in ancient Lore as both creator and destroyer. In Snake Talk: How the world’s ancient serpent stories can guide us, authors Tyson Yunkaporta and Megan Kelleher sit down with historian Mark McKenna to explore these stories and how we can align our human gifts with the patterns of creation.

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. They explore everything from artificial intelligence to immigration through the lens of global serpent lore—through the eye of the snake.

MEGAN KELLEHER

Megan Kelleher belongs to the Barada and Kapalbara peoples of Central Queensland and the branch of the Kelleher clan living in regional Victoria. She is currently on sabbatical from undertaking her PhD at RMIT University in the School of Media and Communication and was honoured to be awarded one of RMIT's Vice Chancellor’s Indigenous Pre-Doctoral Fellowships in 2018. Megan is investigating whether the affordances of blockchain technology are culturally appropriate for Indigenous governance, and is undertaking this research as a core member of the Digital Ethnography Research Centre (DERC) and as a PhD Candidate within The ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society (ADM+S). When she is not training to be an academic, Megan is a devoted mother of her three beautiful children, Eden, Diver and Onyx.

TATHRA UNITING CHURCH

DJIRRINGANJ LANGUAGE: Creating a living lexicon Ellen Mundy & Marcus Mundy with Alasdair McDonald - 4:30pm - 5:30pm, TATHRA UNITING CHURCH

The Djirringanj language is undergoing a process of reawakening with plans in progress to publish a Djirringanj dictionary. Three local Djirringanj educators are taking the lead by revitalising language, in an effort to restore the language and enrich our understanding of Country. Ellen Mundy & Marcus Mundy sit down with Alasdair McDonald to discuss how they’re bringing the language back to life in fun and engaging ways.

HOW DO WE STOP THE VIOLENCE?
Jess Hill & Sonia Orchard with Vesna Andric
1:30pm - 2:30pm, TATHRA UNITING CHURCH

Rates of violence against women and children in Australia remain alarmingly high despite increased efforts over recent decades. Jess Hill’s groundbreaking work on gendered violence and Sonia Orchard’s part-memoir and part-investigation add valuable insight into the institutional, legal and cultural roadblocks to real progress. They will be joined by Vesna Andric from Staying Home Leaving Violence, Bega. *Content Warning: This session contains reference to acts of grooming and family and sexual violence.

JESS HILL

Jess Hill is an Industry Professor researching gender-based violence at the University of Technology, Sydney. Named marie claire’s 2023 Changemaker of the Year, she is a journalist, author, and educator who has achieved global renown for her ground-breaking work on gendered violence. Her journalism has won many awards, including three Walkley awards. Her first book, ‘See What You Made Me Do’, became a bestseller and was awarded the 2020 Stella Prize and the ABA Booksellers Choice non-fiction book of the year. 'See What You Made Me Do' has become a seminal text on family violence and coercive control in Australia and overseas, has been translated into five languages and has also been adapted into a three-part television series for SBS. Since then, she has written a Quarterly Essay on how #MeToo is changing Australia, made a podcast series on coercive control titled The Trap, and another three-part series on Consent, titled Asking For It. Her most recent Quarterly Essay, 'Losing It' critically analyses Australia's efforts to reduce gender-based violence, and last year, she was appointed to the Australian government's Rapid Review into Prevention. In her work as an advocate and educator, Jess has made hundreds of media appearances and has fronted almost 400 events to speak about coercive control across the country.

SONIA ORCHARD

Sonia Orchard is an award-winning author, survivor advocate, writing teacher, speaker and festival founder and director. She has authored four books: a memoir ‘Something More Wonderful’; two adult novels ‘The Virtuoso’ and ‘Into the Fire’, and her most recent memoir ‘Groomed’, which follows her journey through the justice system as a complainant in a historical sexual abuse case and coming to terms with the impact of her teenage experience of sexual abuse while parenting teenage girls. She also writes opinion pieces on issues including the environment, parenting and social justice. In 2019, she founded and was the festival director of the Mountain Festival, Australia’s first writers’ festival to focus exclusively on the environment. She lives on Wurundjeri country, one hour from Naarm/Melbourne, with her family and many pets.

ALASDAIR MCDONALD

Alasdair began his career in music journalism before moving into breaking major news stories for leading Australian outlets. The 2025 Kennedy Awards finalist is passionate about uncovering the truth and amplifying the voices of people who might otherwise go unheard.

THE LAST DAYS OF ZANE GREY: The untold story of a Hollywood legend in Australia and his hunt for the great white shark
Vicki Hastrich with Mike Kermode
3:00pm - 4:00pm, TATHRA UNITING CHURCH

In the summer of 1936, thousands of fans flocked to Bermagui to meet superstar author and Hollywood filmmaker, Zane Grey who in his pursuit of game-fishing put Bermagui on the map. He not only transformed the local economy but also sparked the beginnings of the tuna industry in Eden and Australia. Join historian and fisherwoman Vicki Hastrich as she sits down with Mike Kermode to discuss this fascinating chapter in Bermagui’s history.

VICKI HASTRICH

Vicki Hastrich’s biography The Last Days of Zane Grey vividly examines the life of the American western writer, celebrity and big game-fisherman Zane Grey via the untold story of Grey's two trips to Australia in the 1930s. Known for her keen eye and deep understanding of storytelling and history, Vicki is the author of two novels, Swimming with the Jellyfish and The Great Arch, and the memoir Night Fishing: Stingrays, Goya and the singular life (2019). Writing in the Times Literary Supplement, critic Beejay Silcox has called Night Fishing 'the literary equivalent of a glass-bottomed boat, a frame for wonderment'.

MIKE KERMODE

Mike Kermode is a shortform audio storyteller with the ABC’s Audio Innovation team. As former producer for long-running fishing podcast Tales from the Tinny, he’s always keen to bring stories of fishing glory and woe to life. He grew up in Tathra and is a passionate fisho, spearfisher and surfer.

WORKSHOPS, TATHRA BEACH HOUSE

*WORKSHOPS ARE NOT INCLUDED IN THE WEEKEND OR DAY PASSES

WORKSHOP - WRITING THROUGH SOUND: Crafting audio fiction
Jess Hamilton - 9:30am - 12:00pm, TATHRA BEACH HOUSE

This workshop will guide participants through a sound-based writing practice, from place-based active listening to crafting creative audio fiction. It will be an immersive and interactive session that gives an introduction into writing for audio, considering sound as a character and creating a fiction podcast. Suitable for writers with projects at any stage, whether you already have an idea for a fiction podcast or are simply curious to take a new approach to your writing practice.

JESS HAMILTON

Jess Hamilton is a Gadigal/Eora-based writer and audio storyteller working across creative documentary and fiction podcasts. Her fictional work includes the short, immersive podcast ‘Flirties’ (Audiocraft) and the independent musical audio fiction Slaughterhouse Road. She has also produced creative non-fiction audio work, including the Rose D’Or winning ASMR memoir/documentary, Pillow Talk (Audible, Easy Tiger) and the impactful climate podcast Heaps Better (Greenpeace/Audiocraft). Her podcast work has been awarded by the Australian Podcast Awards, ACRA, and shortlisted for Third Coast & BBC Audio Drama Awards. Jess currently produces an independent podcast called Seaweed People, which features conversations with scientists, artists and conservationists working in coastal restoration She is also is the producer and co-creator of the narrative documentary podcast, SOIL, which documents the growing movement of people regenerating the complex webs of life beneath our feet. Jess has a Masters degree with research in marine acoustic ecology, and explores ideas of ecology, active listening and memory through her creative soundscape and composition practice. She is passionate about the intersection of creativity, culture and science, and projects that deepen our connections to each other and the world around us.

THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF HANDMADE BOOKS WITH PIP MARSHMAN
2:00pm - 4:30pm, TATHRA BEACH HOUSE

Pip Marshman is a Tathra local and has a long association with the arts community. She has held exhibitions in New Zealand, Tathra, Cooma, Jindabyne and Bega. Her work is held internationally and in Australia. Making artist books has been a feature of her artmaking, along with painted canvases, drawing, eco dyeing, mono-printing and shibori.

The workshop will be an introduction to the wonderful world of handmade books. No previous experience is necessary.

We will make 2 projects: a folded, sculptural book and a simple book made from a single sheet.

If you have a protractor that would be handy; all other materials provided.

FREE EVENTS AT THE TATHRA HOTEL

10:00am - 11:30am
POETS BREAKFAST & BOOK LAUNCH
Arrangements by Gabrielle Journey Jones

Gabrielle Journey Jones is an award-winning performance poet from Māori and African bloodlines, born on sovereign Gadigal Land. Speaking truth, hope and gratitude for 30 years through spoken word poetry, Gabrielle has been writing locally on Djiringanj Country since 2018. Gabrielle’s fourth collection ‘Arrangements’ will be launched at Poet’s Breakfast.

4:00pm - 7:00pm
LIVE MUSIC WITH PEPPER & DAVIES

Duo Pepper & Davies are an exciting fusion of a Classical-pop chameleon’s grace with an infamous Blues-man’s groove, and together they write lilting and dancing songs about gritty love and finding belonging within the modern landscape. Pepper & Davies’ unique folk-chamber-rock sound is threaded with sweeping vocals, rich harmonies, haunting bassoon and grooving guitars, and infused with the occasional curious lilt and harmonic spice. Join Zoey Pepper and Damon Davies as they throw open “The Cupboard’- the title of their upcoming debut album- on an intimate array of storytelling through song for the 2025 Headland Writers Festival!