Opening Night: The Haunting Australia of Jane Harper!
Thursday 23 October | 6.30pm
National Museum of Australia
Celebrate Opening Night with international best-selling author Jane Harper and her soon to be released, new haunting mystery, Last One Out. No writer captures the deeply ominous presence of the Australian bush and its outposts, quite like Jane Harper. In The Dry, The Lost Man, Force of Nature - and now Last One Out - she holds a mirror up to our own fear. With this new masterpiece of Australian eeriness, you can feel the bush sunlight in your eyes and dust in your throat.
Jane will be in a captivating conversation with Canberra's own Alex Sloan, who will put the questions we're all dying to ask about Jane's meteoric rise in Australian novel writing, her craft in shaping such memorable plots and characters, and why she can't turn her eyes away from the bush at dusk.
With Alice Matthews, ABC Canberra, at the helm as our Master of Ceremonies we will give you a night to remember... with special guest Canberra musical legend and author, Fred Smith. Let's celebrate and welcome the stellar line up of brilliant international, interstate and local authors we have in store throughout the festival.
Dalton Defies Gravity: Trent Dalton in Conversation
Saturday 25 October | 6.30pm
National Library of Australia
Presented in partnership with the ANU Meet the Author
Australia's bestselling author of Boy Swallows Universe, Trent Dalton, is back with a bang 'surprise' new book – and he wants you to be the first to hear about it. Trent shook the literary world with his embellished memoir of petty crime, drug dealing and family violence in 1980s Brisbane. The way he captured doing it tough, in a uniquely Australian way, became a cultural phenomenon and the most successful Australian-made Netflix series ever.
After a series of subsequent bestselling books, Trent returns with his most personal work yet, Gravity Let Me Go, again set in Brisbane, and about a journalist obsessed with the true-crime scoop of a lifetime. Dark, occasionally terrifying, but with wonderful moments of humour, light and Dalton-sweetness, Trent shows us again why we see ourselves in his work... could the characters be us if we'd just taken a few wrong turns?
In conversation with journalist, author and book enthusiast extraordinaire, Caroline Overington.
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GINSIGHTS: Samantha Faulkner
Samantha Faulkner
Thursday 7 August - 6pm
Big River, 1 Dairy Road Fyshwick
CWF Partners Big River Distilling Co, Paperchain Bookstore and MARION welcome guest author Samantha Faulkner.
Samantha is a Torres Strait Islander and Aboriginal woman, from Badu and Moa Islands in the Torres Strait and the Yadhaigana and Wuthathi peoples of Cape York Peninsula, Queensland. She is the proud author of Life Blong Ali Drummond: A Life in the Torres Strait, (Aboriginal Studies Press, July 2007) and editor of Pamle: Torres Strait Islanders in Canberra (2018). Samantha was the inaugural Torres Strait Islander curator for the 2023 Brisbane Writers Festival and Editor of Growing Up Torres Strait Islander in Australia edition published by Black Inc (2024).
Samantha’s poetry and short stories are published nationally and internationally. She is a member of the ACT Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Arts Network and former Director MARION (ACT Writers) and Treasurer, Us Mob Writing Group and First Nations Australia Writers Network (FNAWN).
Samantha has said: “Our culture is all about colour and vibrancy and the food we eat is from the ocean – dugongs, turtles, crabs, fish, and so on. It’s this way of life that I think perhaps is distinct from the Aboriginal way of life and that comes out in my poetry and stories.” We look forward to a rich and illuminating conversation about what drives her own writing, and her showcasing of the diversity of Torres Strait Islander stories.
Presented in partnership with the Big River Distilling Co, Paperchain Bookstore and MARION.
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GINSIGHTS: Kelly Rimmer
Kelly Rimmer
Thursday 21st August - 6pm
Big River, 1 Dairy Road Fyshwick
CWF Partners Big River Distilling Co, Paperchain Bookstore and MARION welcome guest author Kelly Rimmer.
Kelly writes historical and contemporary fiction, including The Warsaw Orphan, The Things We Cannot Say, The Secret Daughter, and The Paris Agent and has sold more than 2 million books. Her books have been translated into dozens of languages and have appeared on bestseller lists around the world, including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today.
Kelly has included Ginsights in her tour for The Midnight Estate, a gothic epic spanning generations.
The central character, Fiona Winslow, is intent on restoring a dilapidated country mansion on her family’s estate. When a book, The Midnight Estate, catches her attention, Fiona is plunged into a tale that mirrors her own life - a story of love, loss and betrayal. She dismisses the similarities as coincidence, but as she's drawn deeper into the story, the lines between fiction and reality blur, and Fiona must ask herself: how well does she know her family?
Presented in partnership with the Big River Distilling Co, Paperchain Bookstore and MARION.