Yumna Kassab (Keynote Speaker)

Yumna Kassab is the author of The House of Youssef, Australiana and The Lovers. Her most recent book is Politica, an imagined history of the Arab world or else a feminine telling of politics. Her books have been listed for the Miles Franklin Award, Stella Prize, Victorian Premier's Literary Awards and the Prime Ministers' Literary Award. She is the inaugural Parramatta Laureate in Literature and an avid supporter of the Western Sydney Wanderers.

Yumna Kassab 

Dr Sue Boyd

Born in India, Sue Boyd was educated in the many countries where her British Army father was posted - Ireland, Germany, Egypt, Cyprus, UK. In her ‘gap’ year Sue was a volunteer teacher in Zambia. The family migrated to Perth in 1966 and Sue studied at UWA, graduating with a BA Dip Ed and an honorary doctorate, recognising her work in international relations through her 35 year career in the Australian Foreign Service. Her service included Fiji, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Hong Kong and UN New York. Sue worked as an Executive Business coach and as a director in several Australian businesses.

Sue Boyd

Theona Councillor

Theona Councillor is a Naaguja-Wilunyu woman whose ancestors are from the Greenough and Bowes Rivers. With over 20 years of experience in the music industry, Theona has recorded three albums, performed at numerous festivals, and facilitated many singer-songwriting workshops and cultural events that support and celebrate her Naaguja Culture. Extending these skills to the theatre, Theona is currently working on the creative development and co-production of Murla-na Bula Wula Bulangul – a thoonbijee or ‘opera' which tells the Councillor family's oral history of frontier violence that took place in Western Australia's Midwest in 1854.

Theona Councillor

Dr George Criddle

George Criddle is an artist and writer with early settler heritage in Jambinu, Geraldton. George completed their PhD in 2021 titled, ‘Shifting Mentality: A Case Study in Going Home’ which followed their creative practice of communicating colonial silences to family. In 2023, George launched a self-published book ‘Summaries of a Settler Artist’s Journal: Letters to Elizabeth Criddle’ as part of the Big Sky Festival in Geraldton, a book which creatively documents individual and collective family learning about the Pelican Spring Massacre of 1854. George is now co-producing a truth-telling opera Murla-na Bula Wula Bulangul with Naaguja woman, Theona Councillor, and lectures at RMIT University and the Victorian College of the Arts in Melbourne.

George Criddle    George Criddle   georgesteelecrids

Annie de Monchaux

Annie’s novel, Audrey’s Gone AWOL, was published by Ultimo Press in April. Previous lives – nurse, mural artist, script writer Hollywood. Author of Cray Tales which was shortlisted for the WA Premier’s Award. Currently – three children, one husband, one dog, one cat (bad tempered), writing book three.

Annie de Monchaux   Annie de Monchaux   annie_dem_writer

Jake Dennis

Burmese-Australian, Boorloo-based entertainer, singer, poet, and actor - Jake Dennis has regularly been published in local and international poetry anthologies and journals. JD's 2023 prizes include: Red Room Poetry #30in30, Queensland Poetry mentorship, and WAPI's Secret City Micro-Residency. Recently married and always performing, @PoetOfJazz is a Writing WA Emerging Writers Program 2024-25 recipient. 

Jake Dennis    Jake Dennis   poetofjazz

Gabriel Evans

Gabriel Evans is a picture book author and illustrator. His books have been published in eighteen countries, shortlisted in the Children's Book Council's Picture Book of the Year award and read on ABC’s Play School. Gabriel makes his books from a small studio on a big hill surrounded by trees.

Gabriel Evans    Gabriel Evans - Author & Illustrator   gabrielevansart

Chris Hammer

Chris Hammer is a leading Australian crime fiction author. His first book Scrublands was an instant bestseller, winning the UK Crime Writers Association’s New Blood dagger, and has been adapted for television. He now written seven best-selling crime fiction novels. His latest book, The Valley, is published in October 2024.

Chris Hammer    Chris Hammer - author  thehammernow

Sally Herzfeld (Gare)

Sally Gare was born in Western Australia in 1935. Following her teacher training, Sally's first appointment was in 1956 at a Mission inland from Wyndham. Here Sally met Mick Stow in 1957. In the years following, Sally taught in remote schools near Port Hedland, later marrying Tom in 1962.  Tom Herzfeld engineered water supplies Wyndham-Waroona until 1969. They had 3 children then settled in Darlington and started Helena College.

Caitlin Maling

Caitlin Maling is a WA poet and writer with five books published, the most recent of which is Spore or Seed, published in 2023 with Fremantle Press. Her work has been shortlisted for the Prime Minister's Literary Awards, the NSW Premier's Literary Awards and the WA Premier's Book Awards. She is a lecturer at Curtin University, and lives near Walyalup with her young family.

Caitlin Maling    caitlinmaling

Deborah Pike

Deborah is a writer and academic based in Sydney. She grew up in Northam and Perth, Western Australia. She has an Honours degree in English from the University of Western Australia, and a PhD from the University of Sydney. She is an associate professor of English Literature at the University of Notre Dame, Sydney, and is a winner of an Australian Government Award for University Teaching. Deborah has travelled widely and lived in Paris for several years, where she held positions at Shakespeare & Company Bookstore, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the University of Paris VII and the Paris Institute of Political Studies (Sciences Po). She is the author of The Subversive Art of Zelda Fitzgerald, which was shortlisted for the AUHE award in literary criticism. The Players is her first novel.

Deborah Pike    Author Deborah Pike   authordeborahjpike

Glenn B Swift

Glenn B Swift is a Western Australian Storyteller and MC. He has been performing in schools, theatres and festivals in WA since 1988, including most Public Libraries from Albany to Kununurra. He has toured schools in Chile, Peru, Argentina and Uruguay, and in Iceland at the Reykjavik Public Library, in English!

Glenn Swift    Glenn Swift  glenn.swift

David Whish-Wilson

David Whish-Wilson is the author of ten novels and three creative non-fiction books. He was born in Newcastle, NSW but raised in Singapore, Victoria and Western Australia. At eighteen, he left Australia to live for a decade in Europe, Africa and Asia, where he worked as a barman, actor, streetseller, petty criminal, labourer, exterminator, factory worker, gardener, clerk, travel agent, teacher and drug trial guinea pig. David is the author of four novels in the Frank Swann crime series and two in the Lee Southern series, two of which have been shortlisted for Ned Kelly Awards. David wrote the Perth book in the New South Books City Series, which was shortlisted for a WA Premier’s Book Award. Cutler is the first in the Undercover Series. He currently lives in Fremantle, WA, with his partner and three kids, and teaches creative writing at Curtin University.

David Whish-Wilson    David Whish-Wilson   davidwhishwilson

Tess Woods

Tess Woods once had a simple life until her compulsion to write made-up stories complicated everything. She’s now an award-winning and bestselling author of contemporary fiction. Tess is also a physiotherapist, an obsessed little street library owner and has recently found herself accidentally directing Perth’s new Festival of Fiction.

Tess Woods    Tess Woods - Author  tesswoods_author