FEATURED authors
KATE MILDENHALL
Photo credit: Gemma Carr
Kate Mildenhall is the author of three novels - Skylarking (2016), The Mother Fault (2020) and The Humming Bird Effect (2023). The Humming Bird Effect was longlisted for the 2024 Stella Prize and shortlisted for the 2024 ABIA literary FicTon Book of the year.
In 2024 she released her first children’s book To Stir With Love illustrated by Jess Racklye.
For the past six years she has co-hosted The First Time podcast interviewing hundreds of writers including Tim Winton, Helen Garner, Richard Flanagan, George Saunders & Charloae Wood. Her fourth novel is forthcoming.
Kate lives on Wurundjeri lands in Hurstbridge with her partner and two children.
-
Imagined Futures
Saturday 26th of July
3pm-4pm @ Mechanics HallTracy Spicer
Kate MildenhallFacilitator: Karen O’Sullivan
MARK SMITH
Mark Smith is the author of five novels: Three Boys Gone, The Road To Winter, Wilder Country, Land Of Fences and If Not Us. Wilder Country won the 2018 Australian Indie Book Award for YA and The Road To Winter is a popular text on school lists around the country.
He is also an award-winning writer of short fiction whose work has appeared in Best Australian Stories, Great Ocean Quarterly, The Big Issue, Island, The Saturday Paper, The Victorian Writer and The Australian.
He is the co-curator of Minds Went Walking, Paul Kelly’s Songs Reimagined and Into Your Arms, Nick Cave’s Songs Reimagined.
-
What if?...
Saturday 26th of July
10.30am-11.30am @ Mechanics HallMark Smith
Jock Serong
Kylie LaddFacilitator: Tim Nolan
-
Morning Session
Friday 25th of July
10am - 11am @ Community HallMark Smith
TRACEY SPICER AM
Tracey Spicer AM is a multiple Walkley Award winning author, journalist and broadcaster who has anchored national programs for ABC TV and radio, Network Ten and Sky News.
In 2018, Tracey was chosen as one of the Australian Financial Review’s 100 Women of Influence, winning the Social Enterprise and Not-For-Profit category. For her 30 years of media and charity work, she has been awarded the Order of Australia.
Highlights of her outstanding career include writing, producing and presenting documentaries on women and girls in Bangladesh, Kenya, Uganda, Papua New Guinea and India. She is an Ambassador for Your Side, ActionAid, the Ethnic Business Awards, Emerge Australia, the Australian POTS Foundation and Purple Our World, and Patron of the Pancreatic Cancer Alliance.
Tracey’s essays have appeared in dozens of books including Women of Letters, She’s Having a Laugh, Father Figures, Unbreakable, and Bewitched & Bedevilled: Women Write the Gillard Years.
Her first book, The Good Girl Stripped Bare, is a bestseller, while her TEDx Talk, The Lady Stripped Bare, has attracted almost seven million views worldwide.
-
Imagined Futures
Saturday 26th of July
3pm-4pm @ Mechanics HallTracy Spicer
Kate MildenhallFacilitator: Karen O’Sullivan
JOCK SERONG
Photo credit: Joanne O'Keefe
Jock Serong is the author of Quota, winner of the 2015 Ned Kelly Award for Best First Fiction; The Rules of Backyard Cricket, shortlisted for the 2017 Victorian Premier’s Award for Fiction, finalist of the 2017 MWA Edgar Awards for Best Paperback Original, and finalist of the 2017 Indie Book Awards Adult Mystery Book of the Year; and On the Java Ridge, which won the Colin Roderick Award and, internationally, the inaugural Staunch Prize (UK), and was shortlisted for the 2018 Indie Awards.
He has won praise for his trilogy of historical novels Preservation; The Burning Island, which earned him the ARA Historical Novel Prize and the Historia Award for Historical Crime Fiction (France); and The Settlement, which was shortlisted for the Voss Prize and the ARA Historical Novel Prize.
-
What if?...
Saturday 26th of July
10.30am-11.30am @ Mechanics HallMark Smith
Jock Serong
Kylie LaddFacilitator: Tim Nolan
KYLIE LADD
Kylie Ladd is a novelist, psychologist and freelance writer. Her seven novels have been published in Australia and overseas.
She has also co-edited and co-authored two non-fiction books, and her essays and articles have been published in The Age and Sydney Morning Herald, Griffith Review, Meanjin, O Magazine, Good Medicine, Kill Your Darlings and Reader's Digest, amongst others.
Kylie holds a PhD in neuropsychology and lives in Melbourne with her husband and two children.
-
What if?...
Saturday 26th of July
10.30am-11.30am @ Mechanics HallMark Smith
Jock Serong
Kylie LaddFacilitator: Tim Nolan
RACHEL MORTON
Rachel Morton is a writer living on Eastern Maar/Gunditjmara Country in south-west Victoria. Her poetry has appeared in Meanjin Quarterly, The Moth Magazine and various other publications. Rachel was shortlisted for the 2019 Australian Catholic University Prize for Poetry. The Sun Was Electric Light is her first novel and won the 2024 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript.
-
The Real Dirt
Saturday 26th of July
1pm-2pm @ Mechanics HallMaggie MacKellar
Lia Hills
Rachel MortonFacilitator: Kate Bourne
MAGGIE MACKELLAR
Maggie Mackellar is an historian and writer who has published two books on the history of settlement in Australia and Canada and three memoirs: When It Rains, How To Get There and Graft.
When it Rains won the Peter Blazey Fellowship and was shortlisted for the 2010 Queensland Premier's Non Fiction Award, The Victorian Premier's Non Fiction Award and 2010 The Age Book of the Year. Graft has been longlisted for the 2024 Stella Prize, The NIB Award, Highly Commended in The National Biography Award and shortlisted for The Prime Minister’s Literary Award and Tasmanian Premier’s Award.
Maggie lives on the banks of the Tamar River in Tasmania with her partner. She runs the much-loved newsletter The Sit Spot.
-
The Real Dirt
Saturday 26th of July
1pm-2pm @ Mechanics HallMaggie MacKellar
Lia Hills
Rachel MortonFacilitator: Kate Bourne
-
10am-12pm @ Marrar Woorn Neighbourhood House
LIA HILLS
Lia Hills is an award-winning poet, novelist and translator, whose work has been published and translated around the world. Her novels have been nominated for numerous awards, including the Miles Franklin and the NZ Book Awards.
Her latest novel, The Desert Knows Her Name, was written in consultation with the Barengi Gadgin Land Council and other Wimmera communities. Lia narrated the first draft using speech-recognition software during two weeks spent in an old farmhouse on the edge of Wyperfeld National park.
Other works include The Crying Place, the possibility of flight, her translation of Marie Darrieussecq’s internationally-acclaimed novel Tom is Dead, and Balit Bagurrk: Strong Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Women of the Yarra Ranges, of which Lia was co-editor.
Born in Aotearoa, she lives and works on Wurundjeri Country.
-
The Real Dirt
Saturday 26th of July
1pm-2pm @ Mechanics HallMaggie MacKellar
Lia Hills
Rachel MortonFacilitator: Kate Bourne
-
1pm-2pm @ Apollo Bay Library
rOCHELLE d’mELLO
There are hidden meanings and lessons in your life and healing has a beautiful way of discovering them. Things might not always make sense or be fair, and at times something can be very painful. But if we trace our life backwards, we always find our way home, back to ourselves, back to love and back to the light within us.
Through my own healing journey, I gained some incredible insights which invoked a sense of creativity within me. I found inspiration in the intertwined lessons of life and nature.
Nature grounds us, inviting reflection and connection. For children, it serves as a gentle reminder of the Love surrounding them, offering solace in moments of feeling lost and an opportunity to tap into their inner Light. The Light is the unseen guiding force, it brings hope, clarity and intuition.
Through storytelling, I aim to shed light on these themes, showcasing how nature nurtures the heart and the importance of planting the seed of what Love & Light could represent in the impressionable minds of the young people who will shape the future.
My hope is that this story reaches into your heart and your home. May we all discover the power of healing, creating, and never giving up.
-
Author Story Time
Friday 25th of July
1:30pm-2:30pm @ Apollo Bay P-12 College LibraryAuthor Rochelle D’Mello and
Illustrator Teneille Barwick
TENEILLE BARWICK
Teneille is an environmentalist and artist based on the Mornington Peninsula. Through her work with watercolor, gouache and acrylics, she brings to life the stunning coastline, native wildlife and foliage that surround her.
A proud mother of two young girls, Teneille draws inspiration from the natural beauty that shapes both her art and her life.
-
Author Story Time
Friday 25th of July
1:30pm-2:30pm @ Apollo Bay P-12 College LibraryAuthor Rochelle D’Mello and
Illustrator Teneille Barwick