SATURDAY 19 OCTOBER
TATHRA HALL
CHRIS HAMMER
In Conversation with Stuart Coupe
9:30AM TATHRA HALL
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chris Hammer is a leading Australian crime fiction novelist, author of the internationally bestselling Martin Scarsden series: Scrublands, Silver and Trust.
Chris’s current award-winning series features homicide detectives Nell Buchanan and Ivan Lucic: Treasure & Dirt/ Opal Country; The Tilt/Dead Man’s Creek; and now The Seven/Cover The Bones.
Scrublands was an instant bestseller upon publication in 2018, topping the Australian fiction charts. It was shortlisted for major writing awards in Australia, the UK and the United States. In the UK it was named the Sunday Times Crime Novel of the Year 2019 and won the prestigious UK Crime Writers’ Association John Creasey New Blood Dagger Award.
ABOUT THE BOOK
The latest stunning thriller from the bestselling author of Scrublands and The Seven.
Nell Buchanan and Ivan Lucic are back – and Nell is thrown into her most emotionally fraught investigation yet. A controversial entrepreneur is murdered in a remote mountain valley, but this is no ordinary case. Ivan and Nell are soon contending with cowboy lawyers, conmen, bullion thieves and grave robbers. But it's when Nell discovers the victim is a close blood relative that the past begins to take on a looming significance.
What did take place in The Valley all those years ago? What was Nell's mother doing there, and what was her connection to troubled young police officer Simmons Burnside? And why do the police hierarchy insist Ivan and Nell stay with the case despite an obvious conflict of interest?
WILLIAM MCINNES
In Conversation with Roy Masters
11:00AM TATHRA HALL
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
William McInnes is one of Australia's most popular writers and actors. His books include the bestselling memoirs A Man's Got to Have a Hobby and That'd Be Right. In 2012 his book Worse Things Happen at Sea, co-written with his wife, Sarah Watt, was named the best non-fiction title in the ABIA and Indie Awards. William is also an award-winning actor and best known for his leading roles in Blue Heelers, SeaChange, Total Control and The Newsreader.
ABOUT THE BOOK
Have you ever bunged it on? Behaved like a drongo? Added mayo to a story? Lost your Reg Grundies?
Join bestselling storyteller William McInnes as he offers his own take on our colourful and colloquial way with words. From the simpler times of childhood to today's testing (and unprecedented!) times, or when we're wasting time, enjoying sporting times or hitting the big time, Australians have a turn of phrase for every situation. Our love of plain speaking communicates the essence of the thing to our mates, to those in the know - and to those who should know better. Part memoir, part manifesto, this warm, witty, poignant and laugh-out-loud funny collection will have you thinking about what you say, how you say it and what that really says about us as a nation.
MARKUS ZUSAK
In Conversation with Lisa Markham
1:00PM TATHRA HALL
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Zusak is the author of six books. His first three books, The Underdog, Fighting Ruben Wolfe, and When Dogs Cry, released between 1999 and 2001, were all published internationally.
The Messenger (I Am the Messenger in the United States), published in 2002, won the 2003 CBC Book of the Year Award (Older Readers), the New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards: Ethel Turner Prize for Young People's Literature, and was a runner-up for the Printz Award in America.
The Book Thief was published in 2005 and has since been translated into more than 40 languages. The Book Thief was adapted as a film of the same name in 2013. In 2014, Zusak delivered a talk called 'The Failurist' at TEDxSydney at the Sydney Opera House. It focused on his drafting process and journey to success through writing The Book Thief.
A TV series based on The Messenger premiered on ABC in 2023.
ABOUT THE BOOK
There’s a madman dog beside me, and the hounds of memory ahead of us. It’s love and beasts and wild mistakes, and regret, but never to change things…
What happens when the Zusak’s open their family home to three big, wild, pound-hardened dogs – Reuben, a wolf at your door with a hacksaw; Archer, blond, beautiful, deadly; and the rancorously-smiling Frosty, who walks like a rolling thunderstorm? The answer can only be chaos: there are street fights, park fights, public shamings, property trashing, injuries, stomach pumping, purest comedy, shocking tragedy, and carnage that needs to be seen to be believed… not to mention the odd police visit at some ungodly hour of the morning. There is a reckoning of shortcomings and failure, a strengthening of will, but most important of all, an explosion of love – and the joy and recognition of family.
From one of the world’s great storytellers comes a tender, motley and exquisitely written memoir; a love letter to the animals who bring hilarity and beauty – but also the visceral truth of the natural world – straight to our doors and into our lives, and change us forever.
DAVID LINDENMAYER
In Conversation with Chris Masters
2:30PM TATHRA HALL
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Professor David Lindenmayer AO is a world-leading expert on forest conservation and is ranked among Australia's top 50 scientists.
He has led some of the largest-scale environmental research programs in Australia and is the author of 49 books on forests, science and conservation.
ABOUT THE BOOK
The Forest Wars is David Lindenmayer's latest book drawing on 41 years of research and evidence to explain the state of play when it comes to native forest logging. It unashamedly lifts the lid on the destruction of native forests by government, corporations and the logging industry that is making bushfires worse, killing wildlife, and costing taxpayers millions, for the sake of box liners and exported woodchips.
CRIME PANEL
The Ties that Bind
4:00PM TATHRA HALL
CHRIS HAMMER, DINUKA MCKENZIE & HAYLEY SCRIVENOR
IN CONVERSATION WITH EDDIE WILLIAMS
Chris Hammer is a leading Australian crime fiction novelist, author of the internationally bestselling Martin Scarsden series: Scrublands, Silver and Trust. Chris’s current award-winning series features homicide detectives Nell Buchanan and Ivan Lucic: Treasure & Dirt/ Opal Country; The Tilt/Dead Man’s Creek; and now The Seven/Cover The Bones. Scrublands was an instant bestseller upon publication in 2018, topping the Australian fiction charts. It was shortlisted for major writing awards in Australia, the UK and the United States. In the UK it was named the Sunday Times Crime Novel of the Year 2019 and won the prestigious UK Crime Writers’ Association John Creasey New Blood Dagger Award.
Hayley Scrivenor is the author of Girl Falling and Dirt Town. Girl Falling was published in Australia in August 2024 and described by Nine Newspapers as “a remarkable exercise in complex storytelling written in Scrivenor’s idiosyncratic, metaphorically vivid prose” and a “worthy follow-up to the best-selling Dirt Town.”
Dirt Town was published internationally in 2022 (as Dirt Creek in the U.S., where it was a USA TODAY bestseller) and quickly became a #1 Australian bestseller. The novel has been shortlisted for multiple national and international awards and translated into several languages. In 2023, Dirt Town won the ILP John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger, the Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ+ Mystery and the ABIA for General Fiction Book of the Year.
Dinuka McKenzie is an Australian writer and the author of the Detective Kate Miles crime series, The Torrent, Taken and Tipping Point, published in Australia and the UK. She is the winner of the 2020 HarperCollins Australia Banjo Prize. Her writing has been shortlisted for the Sisters in Crime Davitt Awards, the Bad Sydney Crime Danger Awards, and longlisted for the Richell Prize. Her short fiction appeared in the 2022 Dark Deeds Down Under Crime and Thriller Anthology. Dinuka lives with her family in Southern Sydney on Dharawal country.
MAGIC LANTERN SHOW
6:30PM TATHRA HALL
Tickets to the Saturday evening shows are not included in the Weekend/ Day Passes & can be purchased separately at checkout.
FAMILY FRIENDLY!
One hundred and fifty years ago, the towns of the South East were regularly visited by travelling entertainers. Decades before the movies, they projected ‘beautiful dissolving views’ through magic lanterns powered by limelight. Audiences were enthralled as, sitting shoulder to shoulder in the dark, they experienced the suspense, pleasure and laughter of pictures painted on glass mysteriously transforming one into the other.
The Magic Lantern Show uses a magnificent mahogany and brass biunial magic lantern for this contemporary show. Through it, we manipulate, animate, and project authentic hand-painted and photographic slides from the period. Accompanied by musicians, performers, artists and surprise guests we will give you the same experience audiences of all ages had back then.
You will be overwhelmed by the intensely pulsating psychedelic colours generated by mechanical chromatropes. You will thrill to melodramatic stories told through word, image and sound. You will experience local history and the local environment in a whole new light. And you will personally bring back to life the 150-year-old laughter of comic slides such as Man Eating Rats where, well, a man eats rats!
Our travelling team of collaborators has previously performed at the Cellblock Theatre, Powerhouse Museum, the Australian Centre for the Moving Image and many other festivals and venues around Australia. Now we have arrived in Tathra.
MORE INFO HERE
VOICE: A (DE)CONSTRUCTION IN 13 MOVEMENTS
8:30PM TATHRA HALL
Tickets to the Saturday evening shows are not included in the Weekend/ Day Passes & can be purchased separately at checkout.
This is the melody of our identity.
This is the rub that plays us like a symphony.
This is medicine. This is a weapon.
This is every cell in the body, listening
Voice: a (de)construction in 13 movements is a fragile, poetic and intimate exploration that weaves together spoken word, music, movement, sound and imagery to pick at the threads of the stories we tell and the silence we carry.
This debut performance piece is a collaboration between songwriter/musician, Robyn Martin, and poet/storyteller, Rae Kennedy. Both artists live and create on Djiringanj land, in Candelo NSW.
Rae Kennedy is a poet, storyteller and visual artist. Originally from Canada, Rae has been making home and community in the village of Candelo, NSW since 2013. Her creative practice and work are deeply informed by the ordinary stories of the people, objects and land she resides amongst and within.
In recent years Rae’s work as poet/storyteller has found her working as Creative Producer, Scriptwriter and Narrator of the podcast series Candelo Roadshow Radio Hour (2021); co-developer and poet for Songs from Yuin Country project at Four Winds Festival (2021 and 2022); as well as creating and performing original work for live performances including Four Winds Festival; Candelo Village Festival; Blue Skies Music Festival (CAN). Her poetry has been commissioned for recorded audio and film projects such as Home Stretch (Film - 2022) and Hope Loss Resilience (Podcast - 2023). In 2023, her first collection of poetry titled I Read Your Poems Out Loud – a collaboration with her father/poet Stephen Kennedy - was published by Jackson Creek Press (CAN) as a limited-edition chapbook.
Robyn Martin: As a child in regional South Australia, Robyn Martin could be found either shrinking in quiet shyness, on the corner of a stage playing bass with the family band or singing her heart out on the back of a ute. Having completed a Bachelor of Music & Education at Southern Cross University, Robyn became a sought after bass player, touring with many acts to festivals and venues across the country.
Since moving to Candelo on the NSW south coast in 2005, Robyn has become known as a singer-songwriter, bass player, guitarist, producer, performer, choir facilitator and educator in the region. In 2021, Martin’s songwriting was recognised with her releases with alt-country trio, The New Graces, as a semi-finalist in the International Songwriting Competition and nominated for a Golden Guitar. She was a collaborator on the Candelo Roadshow Radio Hour Podcast (2021), and was a songwriter & musician as a part of the Songs From Yuin Country project at Four Winds Festival (2021 & 2022). In Spring of 2023, Robyn released her debut album, Milk & Honey.
TATHRA UNITING CHURCH
KIRSTY ILTNERS
In Conversation with Simon Lauder
9:30AM TATHRA UNITING CHURCH
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kirsty Iltners is a writer and photographer living on Jagera and Turrbal Country in Brisbane with her two daughters, her border collie, and three axolotls. Depth of Field (UWA Publishing 2024) is her first novel and the winner of the 2023 Dorothy Hewett Award.
ABOUT THE BOOK
Told through alternating perspectives, Kirsty Iltners' debut novel examines the lives of two isolated individuals to reveal the fragility of life and the fallibility of our memories. Winner of the 2023 Dorothy Hewett Award, Depth of Field is a gripping novel in which the mechanisms of photography are allowed to falter just enough to expose how selective and unreliable our memories are, especially when parts of the truth are left out of the frame.
SIANG LU
In Conversation with Hayley Scrivenor
11:00AM TATHRA UNITING CHURCH
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Siang Lu is the author of Ghost Cities and The Whitewash, and the co-creator of The Beige Index. The Whitewash won the ABIA Audiobook of the Year in 2023 for its audio adaptation, which starred a large and diverse cast of fourteen actors. It also won the Glendower Award for an emerging writer in the Queensland Literary Awards and was shortlisted for a NSW Premiers Literary Award. In 2023 Siang was named one of the Top 40 Under 40 Asian-Australians at the Asian Australian Leadership Awards. He holds a Master of Letters from the University of Sydney and has written for film and television for Singapore's Beach House Pictures and Malaysia's Astro network. He is based in Brisbane, Australia, and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
ABOUT THE BOOK
Ghost Cities – inspired by the vacant, uninhabited megacities of China – follows multiple narratives, including one in which a young man named Xiang is fired from his job as a translator at Sydney’s Chinese Consulate after it is discovered he doesn’t speak a word of Chinese and has been relying entirely on Google Translate for his work.
How is his relocation to one such ghost city connected to a parallel odyssey in which an ancient Emperor creates a thousand doubles of Himself? Or where a horny mountain gains sentience? Where a chess-playing automaton hides a deadly secret? Or a tale in which every book in the known Empire is destroyed – then re-created, page by page and book by book, all in the name of love and art?
MATT BEVAN PODCAST
1:00PM TATHRA UNITING CHURCH
The ABC’s award-winning podcast and TV show If You’re Listening brings to the festival a live event, looking at the historical context of current news events.
In an event which will be recorded for ABC TV, host Matt Bevan will incorporate music, sound, archival vision and witty writing to explain the key background behind some of the biggest news stories around the world.
Matt Bevan is the host and writer of the award-winning ABC News podcast China, If You’re Listening – formerly Russia, If You’re Listening and America, If You’re Listening. He is also a reporter for Radio National Breakfast, specialising in US and Asian politics. His analysis of international affairs has been featured on CNN, ABCTV, and Radio and The Project on Channel Ten. Prior to this he was a producer for ABC Local Radio and presenter of Treasure Hunter on ABC Newcastle. A Novocastrian, he has also been heavily involved in local amateur theatre as an actor, director, and designer.
THE PERILS OF TRANSLATION
How to translate culture
2:30PM TATHRA UNITING CHURCH
Join Anna Broinowski (The Director is the Commander), Siang Lu (Ghost Cities) and Jessie Tu (The Honeyeater) as they discuss the often-fraught discipline of translation. How do writers represent different cultures to an Australian audience and how do those in power determine the outcome? In conversation with Myoung Jae Yi.
ANNA BROINOWSKI
In Conversation with Jen Hunt
4:00PM TATHRA UNITING CHURCH
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Anna Broinowski is a filmmaker and writer who documents counter-cultural subjects. Her globally screened films include Hell Bento!! (about Japanese subcultures), Forbidden Lie$ (about hoax-author Norma Khouri), Helen's War (about anti-nuclear crusader Dr Helen Caldicott) and Aim High In Creation! (about North Korean cinema). They've won a Walkley and other gongs but Anna's favourite is the Moscow Film Critic's prize which is a carved elephant. A senior lecturer at Sydney University, Anna researches propaganda and deepfakes. Her books are Please Explain: the rise, fall and rise again of Pauline Hanson and The Director is the Commander (reprinted in the US as Aim High in Creation!).
ABOUT THE BOOK
Datsun Angel is a turbo-charged adventure into the savage heart of 1980s Australia: a place completely alien, yet frighteningly similar, to today. EVERYTHING IN THIS BOOK HAPPENED…
THE GRIEF MONOLOGUES
5:30PM TATHRA UNITING CHURCH
Welcome to the club that nobody wants to join
The monologues are inspired by my own experience of grief having lost my mum and from the many interviews I conducted over the years with other people who are on their own journey of grief and grieving. Some funny, some heart breaking some thought provoking and all of them aimed to shake up society’s depiction of grief and inclination to steer well away from it
The monologies are works in progress and the monologues will be performed by professional actors. A Q&A will follow.
Marti Keefer: Marti is a bestselling author of the book Children’s Answers to Everything. Marti is currently writing a feature film for the US. Marti is also an actor, coach and member of the club that nobody wants join. Her extensive career has seen her travel and work all over the world.
Chum Ehelepola: Chum is an esteemed Actor, Writer and Director in Australia and internationally. He starred in the Logie award winning The Newsreader and Nautilus for Disney. He has directed numerous films and plays both here in Australia and Los Angeles.
WORKSHOPS AT TATHRA BEACH HOUSE
CRAFTING YOUR CRIME NOVEL WITH DINUKA MCKENZIE
10AM - 1PM TATHRA BEACH HOUSE
Ever wondered why crime fiction remains one of the most popular genres on the market that keeps readers coming back for more? Join crime author, Dinuka McKenzie, as she breaks down the key elements underpinning compelling crime fiction, and how a crime writer’s toolkit can benefit your work-in-progress, whatever genre you are writing in. Whether it be adding elements of mystery and intrigue, exploring morally grey characters, or working on pacing and tension.
In this four-hour workshop, Dinuka will take participants through what makes a crime novel work, with specific focus on writing believable antagonists and generating forward momentum within the narrative. With writing exercises and plenty of time for questions, this workshop is suitable for early-stage writers working on a crime fiction manuscript (mystery, thriller or suspense).
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dinuka McKenzie is an Australian writer and the author of the Detective Kate Miles crime series, The Torrent, Taken and Tipping Point, published in Australia and the UK. She is the winner of the 2020 HarperCollins Australia Banjo Prize. Her writing has been shortlisted for the Sisters in Crime Davitt Awards, the Bad Sydney Crime Danger Awards, and longlisted for the Richell Prize. Her short fiction appeared in the 2022 Dark Deeds Down Under Crime and Thriller Anthology. Dinuka lives with her family in Southern Sydney on Dharawal country.
RUBY TODD
From Fact to Fiction: Using research to inspire and strengthen your creative writing
2PM - 4:30PM TATHRA BEACH HOUSE
In this workshop, Ruby Todd will share some of the ways in which her novel, Bright Objects, was inspired by various threads of research and real life – from famous comets to conspiracies and funeral homes. She will also lead participants through various practical exercises designed to provide them with fresh ways of drawing from research and real life to inspire and enrich fiction – so that they leave the workshop with new ideas and strategies for their writing.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ruby Todd is an Australian writer, creative arts researcher, and teacher, with a PhD in Writing & Literature. She is the recipient of the inaugural 2020 Furphy Literary Award, the 2019 Ploughshares Emerging Writer’s Contest award for Fiction, and the 2016 AAWP Chapter One Prize. She has completed residencies at The Wheeler Centre and La Trobe University, and her work has appeared in Ploughshares, the Guardian, Crazyhorse, Overland and elsewhere.
TATHRA HOTEL - FREE!
POET’S BREAKFAST
9:30AM TATHRA HOTEL
More information available soon. Stay tuned!
OLGA MASTERS SHORT STORY AWARD ANNOUNCEMENT
2:00PM TATHRA HOTEL
Kate Kruimink will announce the winner of this year’s Olga Masters Short Story Award at Headland Writers Festival on Sat 19 October. The award, originally established by Well Thumbed Books in Cobargo, has been running since 2014 with the winning entry featured in Island Magazine literary publication.
“Each year we receive over 100 short story entries responding to the theme of life in rural Australia” explained Andrew Gray from South East Arts. “This year our two judges, Kate Kruimink and local writer Kate Liston-Mills, will read through a diverse range of stories to make their selection”.
Olga Masters was born in Pambula on the Far South Coast of New South Wales, the second of eight children. In 1928 the family moved to Cobargo. Olga was first published at the age of 15 in the Cobargo Chronicle, a weekly newspaper serving the south coastal area between Bega and Moruya. While she wanted to write fiction from an early age, Olga was not published as a writer of fiction until late in her life. Between 1979 and 1980, she won nine awards for her short stories.
TATHRA HOTEL DINING ROOM - FREE!
CASSANDRA PYBUS
10:00AM TATHRA HOTEL DINING ROOM
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Cassandra Pybus is an award-winning author and a distinguished historian. She is the author of thirteen books including the bestselling biography, Truganini and has held research professorships at the University of Sydney, Georgetown University in Washington DC, the University of Texas and King's College London. She is descended from a colonist who received the largest free land grant on Truganini's traditional country of Bruny Island.
ABOUT THE BOOK
After Cassandra finished writing Truganini - she started to investigate what happened to the remains of other First People and what she has discovered is truly horrifying. She has evidence that every known burial site of the First People in Tasmania was looted, and their remains sent to collectors and museums in Tasmania, in mainland Australia, and overseas.
Worse still, colonial surgeons cut the bodies any First People who died in the hospital in Hobart in order to acquire their remains. Eminent British collectors such as Sir Joseph Banks and the Duke of Newcastle cultivated contacts in the colony who could supply them with exotic specimens of the thylacine and the platypus and especially the original people of the colony. The belief that they were an utterly unique race and facing possible extinction had the European scientific community scrambling for human exhibits.
Many leading colonial figures were involved in this clandestine trade, among them four colonial governors, several key politicians and even Lady Jane Franklin who all enhanced their wealth and status through gifting or selling human ancestral remains to collectors and institutions.
MATT BEVAN
3:00PM TATHRA HOTEL DINING ROOM
More information available soon. Stay tuned!
Matt Bevan is the host and writer of the award-winning ABC News podcast China, If You’re Listening formerly Russia, If You’re Listening and America, If You’re Listening. He is also a reporter for Radio National Breakfast, specialising in US and Asian politics. His analysis of international affairs has been featured on CNN, ABCTV, and Radio and The Project on Channel Ten. Prior to this he was a producer for ABC Local Radio and presenter of Treasure Hunter on ABC Newcastle. A Novocastrian, he has also been heavily involved in local amateur theatre as an actor, director, and designer.