Madeleine Cleary
Madeleine's debut novel, The Butterfly Women (29 April 2025, Affirm Press), inspired by her family history, was chosen as Dymocks Fiction Book of the Month. Her writing was shortlisted for The Australian Fiction Prize in 2024. She holds a Master of Arts degree from the University of Melbourne and an associated honours degree from RMIT University. Oblivious to her history, Madeleine completed her studies a block from her family’s brothel in Juliet Terrace, which inspired her debut novel. Madeleine served as an Australian diplomat in China. Before joining the public service, Madeleine spent five years working in bookshops, where she met her husband. Madeleine is from Naarm/Melbourne and lives at the foothills of the Dandenong Ranges.
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Hannah Kent
Hannah Kent's first novel, the international bestseller, Burial Rites (2013), was translated into 30 languages and was shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction and the Guardian First Book Award. It won the ABIA Literary Fiction Book of the Year, the Indie Awards Debut Fiction Book of the Year and the Victorian Premier's People's Choice Award, and was shortlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.
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Hannah's second novel, The Good People was published in 2016 (ANZ) and 2017 (Feb, UK; Sept, North America). It was shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, the Indie Book Award for Fiction and the ABIA Literary Fiction Book of the Year. It has been translated into 10 languages.
Hannah’s original feature fil -
Elizabeth Tan
Elizabeth Tan is a Perth writer and sessional academic at Curtin University. Her work has appeared in Best Australian Stories 2016, The Lifted Brow, Seizure, Pencilled In, Westerly, Overland, Mascara Literary Review, and other Australian journals and anthologies. Her first book, Rubik, was published in 2017.
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Tania Blanchard
Tania lives in Sydney with her husband and three children. Coming from a family with rich cultural heritage with a German mother and Italian father, stories have always been in her blood. Following a career in physiotherapy, it was only when she had her family that she decided to return to her passion of writing.
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Her debut novel is The Girl from Munich, the story she has always wanted to write, inspired by the fascinating stories told by her German grandmother, and she is currently working on the sequel, set in Australia in the 1950s.
Tania is excited to have found her light bulb moment, her love for writing historical fiction. She looks forward to delving further into her interests of history and family stories to enrich and bring to life -
Zoe Boccabella
Zoë Boccabella is an Australian author of both non-fiction and fiction. Her books have been much acclaimed, selected for literary and popular awards and sold internationally. Zoë’s migrant ancestry and handed-down recipes influence her writing, along with subtropical Brisbane, where she was born and lives, as well as travels in Europe and Australia. With a degree in literature, film and sociology and a Master of Philosophy, she’s worked as a researcher, writer and media advisor for several levels of government, the police service, universities and freelance. Zoë also loves to cook, especially dishes from generations of women and men in her family and their varied cultural pasts, ingredients and spoken stories shared over the kitchen table.
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Emma Clancey
Emma Clancey is a fantasy writer and medical student living in Sydney. In 2024, she was awarded the Ray Koppe/Australian Society of Authors Young Writers Fellowship. Emma's debut novel, This Dream Will Devour Us, is a YA fantasy thriller that blends her passions for magic and medicine. When not writing or horrifying her friends with unsolicited medical facts, she's likely jabbering about her latest reads on Instagram @emma.clancey.
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Debra Oswald
Debra Oswald is a playwright, screenwriter and novelist. She is a two-time winner of the NSW Premier's Literary Award and author of the novels Useful (2015), The Whole Bright Year (2018) and The Family Doctor (2021). She was creator/head writer of the first five seasons of the successful TV series Offspring.
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Her stage plays have been performed around the world and published by Currency Press. Gary's House, Sweet Road and The Peach Season were all shortlisted for the NSW Premier's Literary Award. Debra has also written four plays for young audiences—Dags, Skate, Stories in the Dark and House on Fire. She has written three Aussie Bites books and six children's novels, including The Redback Leftovers.
Her television credits include award-winning -
Sarah Clutton
Sarah Clutton is an Australian author and former lawyer who writes contemporary fiction full of drama, suspense and humour. Having majored in psychology in her original degree, she is fascinated by people. How does the past shape us? What determines the outcomes when moral and legal boundaries collide? Are the adults really always right?
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Sarah's work saw her named as the national recipient of the Dymocks/Fiona McIntosh Commercial Fiction Scholarship in 2018. Her next book, The Remarkable Truths of Alfie Bains is published by Allen & Unwin and will be on the shelves in 2025. She lives with her family in the beautiful Southern Highlands of New South Wales in the tiny, historic village of Berrima. The region is famous for the International Cri -
Holly Brunnbauer
Holly Brunnbauer is a multi-award-winning emerging fiction author with numerous accolades in writing competitions across Australia, New Zealand and the U.S.
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Holly writes stories filled with heart, humour and hijinks. Her signature style includes a strong commercial voice, quirky cast and putting the 'com' in rom-com.
She first caught the writing bug via blogging and later transitioned into copywriting. Holly's now a sought-after virtual assistant for published and aspiring authors.
Based in rural Victoria, she spends her time with her husband, two rambunctious boys and a cheeky pug, planning and building their off-grid country home. The outdoors is her happy place. -
Mary-Lou Stephens
Mary-Lou Stephens was born in Tasmania, studied acting at The Victorian College of the Arts and played in bands in Melbourne, Hobart and Sydney. Eventually she got a proper job - in radio, where she was a presenter and music director, first with commercial radio and then with the ABC.
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She received rave reviews for her memoir Sex, Drugs and Meditation (2013), the true story of how meditation changed her life, saved her job and helped her find a husband.
Mary-Lou has worked and played all over Australia and now travels the world slowly and writes, mostly.
Her debut novel The Last of the Apple Blossom was published by HarperCollins (HQ) in 2021.
The Chocolate Factory (HarperCollins HQ) 2024.
The Jam Maker (HarperCollins HQ) 2025
Praise for The Choco -
Nilima Rao
Nilima Rao is a Fijian Indian Australian who has always referred to herself as "culturally confused." She has since learned that we are all confused in some way and has been published on the topic by Australia’s Special Broadcasting Service and now feels better about the whole thing. When she isn't writing, Nilima can be found wrangling data (the dreaded day job) or wandering around Melbourne laneways in search of the next new wine bar.
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Bruce Nash
I have always written.
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For three decades, I taught English in Secondary Schools throughout Queensland.
I survived.
I now live and write and make habitat on the far south coast of New South Wales, on Djiringanj Country by the shores of Wallaga Lake, with my partner Deborah, our dogs Finnegan and Rupert, numerous chooks, a Satin Bower Bird called Lord Byron, a Diamond Python who shall remain nameless, and numerous Wattlebirds, Lorikeets, Galahs, White-headed Pigeons, Whipbirds, King Parrots, Crimson Rosellas, Black Cockatoos, Eastern Spinebills.......
All the Words We Know is my most recent novel, published by Allen & Unwin in 2024.
My previous novel was The Long River of Cat Fisher, published in 2020 by Australian Scholarly Publishing (Arden -
Claire Thomas
Claire Thomas is an Australian writer. She has published short stories in various journals, including Meanjin, Island, Overland and Australian Short Stories. She has an Honours degree in English and Art History from the University of Melbourne where she is currently undertaking a PhD. Fugitive Blue is her first novel.
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Gail Holmes
Gail Holmes grew up in Scotland, the youngest of seven children and the only girl. She graduated from the University of Strathclyde with a BSc (Hons) in Civil Engineering and a Master of Business Administration. She moved to London to join an international energy company and had an international career there for twenty-three years as a project manager and commercial manager. During this time Gail also married and had five children. She moved to Australia in 2013. Her creative writing journey began when she was a working mum with very young children in Shanghai, China. Unable to get back to sleep one night, Gail started writing short stories about living in Shanghai. As this writing habit continued to grow, she attended short courses at the
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Victoria Brownlee
Victoria Brownlee is an Australian-born food writer. She's spent the best part of the last decade eating her way around the world, including a two-year stint in China where she was the Food & Drink Editor at Time Out Shanghai. In 2016, she traded dumplings for cheese, and stopped off in France for seven years. She's now back in Melbourne and is quietly contemplating her next move. She has an MA (Publishing and Communications) from the University of Melbourne, Australia.
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Suellen Dainty
I worked as a journalist and television producer after leaving university. It never occurred to me to write fiction. Like many working single mothers, I was too busy and too tired to try for anything more.
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But my two children grew up. Finally I could ditch the day job. I moved from London to a small farm in Somerset, where I ran a B and B and learned how to be a short order cook and iron mountains of bedlinen very quickly. I also studied creative writing at the University of Oxford and at Bath Spa University.Then a fight against breast cancer gave me the impetus I needed. No time to lose!
At the age of 62, my first novel, After Everything, was published by Simon and Schuster in the U.S. and by Picador in Australia. I'm currently writing my -
Sean Wilson
Sean Wilson is a writer from Perth, now based in Melbourne. His short stories have been published in Australia and internationally, including in Island, The Big Issue and Narrative, and he was shortlisted for the Patrick White Playwrights Award by Sydney Theatre Company. His debut novel is Gemini Falls.
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Sarah Schmidt
Sarah Schmidt is a Melbourne based writer who happens to work at a public library.
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See What I Have Done is her first novel.
Sarah is currently watching:
Nathan for You
A shit ton of YouTube for 'research purposes’
Lady Dynamite (re watch)
Sarah is currently reading:
Cove - Cynan Jones
Last Read:
Hourglass - Dani Shapiro
Things Sarah has burnt this week:
Her face, cheese on toast
Sarah is currently listening to the following podcasts:
The butterfly effect
Ear Hustle
It's Not A Race
The Moth
Criminal
How Did This Get Made
The Allusionist
You Must Remember This
Comedy Bang Bang
Death, Sex & Money
This week's random useless fact:
Sarah eats pasta
Tell us one more thing?
Sarah's least favourite season is summer -
Kyra Geddes
Born in Adelaide, with German-Italian heritage, Kyra Geddes spent her infancy on the South Australian opal fields before moving to Sydney. Following a successful career in marketing, Kyra returned to university to study English and pursue her life-long dream of writing, earning the Vice-Chancellor's Award for Academic Excellence. THE STORY THIEF is her debut novel and the culmination of almost a decade of research and writing. When not at her desk, Kyra can often be found visiting one of Sydney's many art galleries or daydreaming about future travel with her husband and two children.
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William Edgar
William Edgar
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Bill Edgar is the one they call ‘The Coffin Confessor’ - he’s a successful businessman, counsellor, author and one of Australia’s leading private detectives, who’s known for doing what most lawyers, accountants and professionals won’t, can’t or fear: speak the truth of those silenced. - Penguin bio -
Kate Horan
Author | Domestic Suspense
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I write stories about complicated families with dark secrets. -
Anita Heiss
Professor Anita Heiss – bio
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Anita is a proud member of the Wiradjuri nation of central New South Wales, and is one of Australia’s most prolific and well-known authors, publishing across genres, including non-fiction, historical fiction, commercial fiction and children’s novels.
Her adult fiction includes Not Meeting Mr Right, Avoiding Mr Right, Manhattan Dreaming, Paris Dreaming and Tiddas. Her most recent books include Barbed Wire and Cherry Blossoms which was longlisted for the Dublin International Literary Prize and was named the University of Canberra’s 2020 Book of the Year.
The anthology Growing Up Aboriginal in Australia which Anita edited, was named the Small Publisher Adult Book of the Year at the 2019 Australian Book Industry Awards -
Ethel Turner
Born in England in 1870, Ethel Turner came to Australia with her mother and sisters when she was 10 years old. She showed a great love of literature while at school and in her late teens launched a literary and social magazine in Sydney with her sister Lilian Turner. Ethel kept diaries for a remarkable 62 years, recording the details of her full and eventful life. In January 1893 she recorded in her diary, "Night started a new story that I shall call Seven Little Australians." Later that year, she finished the book, parcelled it up and sent it off to a publisher in Melbourne. Since then the book has sold over 2 million copies in the English language and has been reprinted over 50 times. It has been translated into at least 11 languages, per
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Michelle Montebello
MICHELLE MONTEBELLO is a writer from Sydney, Australia where she lives with her family.
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She is the internationally bestselling author of The Quarantine Station, The Lost Letters of Playfair Street and The Forever Place.
Her books have won numerous accolades. The Quarantine Station won the 2023 International Book Excellence Award while The Lost Letters of Playfair Street won the 2020 ARRA Award for Favourite Historical Romance. The Forever Place was a 2022 ARRA and RWA RuBY Award finalist.
Michelle has been shortlisted three times for ARRA Australian Author of the Year.
For all Michelle’s book news, subscribe to her newsletter at www.michellemontebello.com.au.
Reach out to Michelle on social media:
Facebook: https://bit.ly/2JA6EsB
Instagram: https -
Emma Pei Yin
Emma Pei Yin is an Australian-Chinese writer and editor. Her debut novel, When Sleeping Women Wake, has been published globally, translated into multiple languages and was longlisted for the ARA Historical Novel Prize (2025).
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She is also the founder of yinfluence editorial, an agency that works with PoC, queer and neurodivergent writers, connecting them with editors and mentors who understand the stakes of telling stories from the margins.
She has been featured in The Canberra Times, The Australian, Mekong Review, Being Asian Australian, The Hong Kong Review, Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar & more.
Emma is working on her second novel with her extremely barky dachshund, lady, by her side. -
Rebecca Starford
Rebecca Starford is the author of Bad Behaviour, a memoir about boarding school and bullying. The book was optioned for television by Matchbox Pictures and aired in Australia on STAN, as well as streamed through more than 20 other countries across the world. Rebecca's first novel, The Imitator, was published in Australia, and in the United States, Canada, the UK and South Africa under the title An Unlikely Spy.
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She is also the co-founder and publishing director of Kill Your Darlings, and has previously worked for Text Publishing and Australian Book Review. Originally from Melbourne, Rebecca currently lives in France. -
Luke Johnson
Luke is a writer from Ocean Grove, on the Bellarine Peninsula in Victoria, Australia. He is married with two daughters. He is a physiotherapist by trade, combining this with his love of reading and writing. A fan of literary fiction, crime fiction, and strong Australian-facing narratives and overtones, his debut, King Tide, is due out on July 29 2025 through Affirm Press / Simon & Schuster.
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Brooke Hardwick
ABOUT THE BOOK
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In this spine-chilling gothic thriller, a woman on the brink travels to a remote writers’ retreat to uncover the secrets of her past and lands herself in a deadly situation that could destroy her future.
Kate arrives on the wild, remote island of Rathlin in the freezing Irish Channel for a ten-day writers’ retreat. Plagued by memories she can’t unravel and desperate to understand the breakdown of her marriage, Kate is determined to leave the retreat with answers.
As the retreat’s director uses techniques that tap into the eerie mythology of the island, Kate becomes increasingly fascinated by him and her surrounds. But when the temperature plummets and the strange therapy intensifies, her memories unspool. Triggered into a serie -
Mandy Beaumont
Mandy is an award-winning writer and a researcher in creative writing. Her debut novel The Furies was long-listed for the prestigious Stella Prize and shortlisted for the MUD Literary Prize. The Furies was also shortlisted for the Queensland Literary Awards Fiction Book of the Year . Her collection of short stories, Wild, Fearless Chests, was shortlisted for the Richell Prize and the Dorothy Hewett Award. Stories from the collection also won the MOTH International Short Story Prize and were shortlisted for other notable awards. She is a convenor in creative writing at Griffith University and holds a PhD and a Research Masters in creative writing. She is also a regular feature writer and book reviewer for The Big Issue.
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Debra Oswald
Debra Oswald is a playwright, screenwriter and novelist. She is a two-time winner of the NSW Premier's Literary Award and author of the novels Useful (2015), The Whole Bright Year (2018) and The Family Doctor (2021). She was creator/head writer of the first five seasons of the successful TV series Offspring.
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Her stage plays have been performed around the world and published by Currency Press. Gary's House, Sweet Road and The Peach Season were all shortlisted for the NSW Premier's Literary Award. Debra has also written four plays for young audiences—Dags, Skate, Stories in the Dark and House on Fire. She has written three Aussie Bites books and six children's novels, including The Redback Leftovers.
Her television credits include award-winning -
Jackie French
Jackie is an award-winning writer, wombat negotiator and the Australian Children’s Laureate for 2014-2015. She is regarded as one of Australia’s most popular children’s authors, and writes across all genres - from picture books, history, fantasy, ecology and sci-fi to her much loved historical fiction. In her capacity as Australian Children’s Laureate, ‘Share a Story’ will be the primary philosophy behind Jackie’s two-year term.
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Michael Robotham
Two-times Gold Dagger winner (2015 and 2020), twice Edgar best novel finalist (2016 and 2020) and winner of the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger (2021), Michael Robotham was born in Australia in November 1960 and grew up in small country towns that had more dogs than people and more flies than dogs. He escaped became a cadet journalist on an afternoon newspaper in Sydney.
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For the next fourteen years he worked for newspapers and magazines in Australia, Europe, Africa and America. As a senior feature writer for the UK’s Mail on Sunday he was among the first people to view the letters and diaries of Czar Nicholas II and his wife Empress Alexandra, unearthed in the Moscow State Archives in 1991. He also gained access to Stalin’s Hitler files, which had -
Margaret Hickey
Margaret Hickey is an award-winning author and playwright from North East Victoria. She has a PhD in Creative Writing and is deeply interested in rural lives and communities. She is the author of Cutters End and Stone Town.
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Jane Caro
Jane Caro wears many hats; including author, lecturer, mentor, social commentator, columnist, workshop facilitator, speaker, broadcaster and award-winning advertising writer. Jane runs her own communications consultancy and lectures in Advertising Creative at The School of Communication Arts at UWS. She has published three books: The Stupid Country: How Australia is dismantling public education co-authored with Chris Bonnor (2007), The F Word. How we learned to swear by feminism co-authored with Catherine Fox (2008), and Just a Girl (UQP, 2011). She has also appeared on Channel 7’s Sunrise, ABC’s Q&A and ABC’s The Gruen Transfer.
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Natasha Lester
Natasha Lester is the multi-award winning and New York Times best-selling author of THE PARIS SEAMSTRESS, THE PARIS ORPHAN, THE PARIS SECRET and THE DISAPPEARANCE OF ASTRID BRICARD. Her new book, THE MADEMOISELLE ALLIANCE, the story of Marie-Madeleine Fourcade, the only female leader of a French Resistance network in WWII, is coming in April 2025.
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Prior to writing, she worked as a marketing executive for L’Oreal, managing the Maybelline brand, before returning to university to study creative writing.
Natasha's books have been translated into twenty-one different languages and are published all around the world. She lives in Perth, Western Australia with her 3 children and loves fashion history, practising the art of fashion illustration, col -
Kelly Rimmer
Kelly Rimmer is the author of historical and contemporary fiction, including The Warsaw Orphan, The Things We Cannot Say and The Secret Daughter, with 3 million books sold. 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.
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Since 2022, Kelly has owned and operated Collins Booksellers Orange, the last remaining bookstore in the small regional city she calls home. Her next novel, The Midnight Estate, will be released in Australia, New Zealand and the UK in July 2025. -
Hannah Kent
Hannah Kent's first novel, the international bestseller, Burial Rites (2013), was translated into 30 languages and was shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction and the Guardian First Book Award. It won the ABIA Literary Fiction Book of the Year, the Indie Awards Debut Fiction Book of the Year and the Victorian Premier's People's Choice Award, and was shortlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.
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Hannah's second novel, The Good People was published in 2016 (ANZ) and 2017 (Feb, UK; Sept, North America). It was shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, the Indie Book Award for Fiction and the ABIA Literary Fiction Book of the Year. It has been translated into 10 languages.
Hannah’s original feature fil -
Mary-Lou Stephens
Mary-Lou Stephens was born in Tasmania, studied acting at The Victorian College of the Arts and played in bands in Melbourne, Hobart and Sydney. Eventually she got a proper job - in radio, where she was a presenter and music director, first with commercial radio and then with the ABC.
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She received rave reviews for her memoir Sex, Drugs and Meditation (2013), the true story of how meditation changed her life, saved her job and helped her find a husband.
Mary-Lou has worked and played all over Australia and now travels the world slowly and writes, mostly.
Her debut novel The Last of the Apple Blossom was published by HarperCollins (HQ) in 2021.
The Chocolate Factory (HarperCollins HQ) 2024.
The Jam Maker (HarperCollins HQ) 2025
Praise for The Choco -
Tanya Scott
Tanya Scott is an Australian writer, doctor and educator. She is an accomplished survivor of near misses, including escaping from an engineering degree out of high school, crashing a car with a huntsman (spider, not human) on her lap and getting caught in a rip off the coast of Cocos Island. She also managed to finish medical school with her sense of humour intact.
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Over a varied medical career, she has learned more from her patients than from any textbook – not just about physical and mental health, but about humanity, resilience and the absurdity of life. While these themes inform her writing, her love of twisty mysteries has made her an accidental crime writer.
After growing up on the coast in western Victoria, Tanya studied and worked in -
Ashley Kalagian Blunt
Ashley Kalagian Blunt is an author, speaker and podcaster. Her number one bestselling psychological thriller, Dark Mode, was published in Australia/NZ, the UK, South Korea and Germany. It was shortlisted for the 2024 ABIA General Fiction Book of the Year, the Ned Kelly Awards and the Danger Awards.
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Her latest thrillers are Cold Truth and Like, Follow, Die.
She has two earlier books, How to Be Australian, a memoir, and My Name Is Revenge, a thriller novella and collected essays. Her writing appears widely across Australian and international publications.
Ashley is a frequent speaker and panel moderator, and co-hosts James and Ashley Stay at Home, a podcast about writing, creativity and health. She has taught creative writing across Austr -
Kate Horan
Author | Domestic Suspense
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I write stories about complicated families with dark secrets. -
Mark Brandi
Mark Brandi's bestselling novel, Wimmera, won the coveted British Crime Writers' Association Debut Dagger, and was named Best Debut at the 2018 Australian Indie Book Awards. It was also shortlisted for the Australian Book Industry Awards Literary Fiction Book of the Year, the Matt Richell Award for New Writer of the Year, and the Ned Kelly Award for Best First Crime.
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Mark's second novel, The Rip, was published to critical acclaim in 2019, and his third novel, The Others, was shortlisted for the Best Fiction prize in the 2022 Ned Kelly Awards. His fourth novel, Southern Aurora, was Highly Commended in the 2024 Victorian Premier's Literary Awards. His fifth novel, Eden, was published in July 2025.
Mark's shorter work has appeared in The Guardi -
Dervla McTiernan
Number one internationally bestselling author Dervla McTiernan is the critically acclaimed and award-winning author of six novels, including the much-loved Cormac Reilly series and two number 1 bestselling standalone thrillers, The Murder Rule and What Happened to Nina?, both New York Times Best Thrillers of the Year and both currently in development for screen adaptation. Dervla is also the author of four novellas, and her audio novella, The Sisters, was a four-week number one bestseller in the United States. Before turning her hand to writing, Dervla spent twelve years working as a lawyer in her home country of Ireland. Following the global financial crisis, she relocated to Western Australia where she now lives with her husband, two chil
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Cassie Hamer
Cassie Hamer has a professional background in journalism and PR, but now much prefers the world of fiction over fact. She has published four novels, which focus on the dark side of suburbia.
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Cassie lives in Sydney with her terrific husband, three, mostly-terrific daughters, and a labradoodle, Charlie, who is the least demanding member of the family. In between making school lunches and walking the dog, Cassie is also working on her next novel but always has time to connect with other passionate readers via her website – CassieHamer.com – or through social media.
You can follow her on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. -
Jessica Dettmann
Jessica Dettmann is the author of two novels, a couple of short stories and many blog posts. She was born and raised in Sydney, Australia, and there she remains, disappointing her fourteen-year-old self who thought she would be living in the pensione in Florence from A Room With A View by now.
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She is married and has two children and two cats. She does not enjoy walking on the beach with her dog because parking is very expensive at the beach and she does not have a dog.
Before she became a writer, she worked for a long time as a book editor. She is very lucky Instagram didn't exist back then or she would have been fired for timewasting. Now she is her own boss and she is on her last warning for timewasting on Instagram Stories.
She loves to -
Dominic Amerena
Dominic Amerena is a writer from Melbourne. His work has appeared in places like Australian Book Review, Overland, the Australian, the Lifted Brow, the Age, Meanjin and Kill Your Darlings.
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His work has been recognised in a number of awards, most recently the 2017 ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize. -
Bruce Nash
I have always written.
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For three decades, I taught English in Secondary Schools throughout Queensland.
I survived.
I now live and write and make habitat on the far south coast of New South Wales, on Djiringanj Country by the shores of Wallaga Lake, with my partner Deborah, our dogs Finnegan and Rupert, numerous chooks, a Satin Bower Bird called Lord Byron, a Diamond Python who shall remain nameless, and numerous Wattlebirds, Lorikeets, Galahs, White-headed Pigeons, Whipbirds, King Parrots, Crimson Rosellas, Black Cockatoos, Eastern Spinebills.......
All the Words We Know is my most recent novel, published by Allen & Unwin in 2024.
My previous novel was The Long River of Cat Fisher, published in 2020 by Australian Scholarly Publishing (Arden -
Sarah Clutton
Sarah Clutton is an Australian author and former lawyer who writes contemporary fiction full of drama, suspense and humour. Having majored in psychology in her original degree, she is fascinated by people. How does the past shape us? What determines the outcomes when moral and legal boundaries collide? Are the adults really always right?
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Sarah's work saw her named as the national recipient of the Dymocks/Fiona McIntosh Commercial Fiction Scholarship in 2018. Her next book, The Remarkable Truths of Alfie Bains is published by Allen & Unwin and will be on the shelves in 2025. She lives with her family in the beautiful Southern Highlands of New South Wales in the tiny, historic village of Berrima. The region is famous for the International Cri -
Shelley Burr
Shelley Burr works at the Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment in Canberra, Australia. She grew up splitting her time between Newcastle and Glenrowan, where her father's family are all sheep farmers.
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Luke Johnson
Luke is a writer from Ocean Grove, on the Bellarine Peninsula in Victoria, Australia. He is married with two daughters. He is a physiotherapist by trade, combining this with his love of reading and writing. A fan of literary fiction, crime fiction, and strong Australian-facing narratives and overtones, his debut, King Tide, is due out on July 29 2025 through Affirm Press / Simon & Schuster.
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Angie Faye Martin
Angie Faye Martin is a writer and editor of Kooma, Kamilaroi and European heritage. With a Bachelor of Public Health from the Queensland University of Technology and a Masters of Anthropology from the Australian National University, Angie spent many years working in policy roles in state and federal government before launching Versed Writings in 2019. Her work has been published in Meanjin, Garland, The Saltbush Review and The Rocks Remain. She is a member of the First Nations Australia Writers Network and accredited with the Institute of Professional Editors. Melaleuca is her debut novel.
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Emma Pei Yin
Emma Pei Yin is an Australian-Chinese writer and editor. Her debut novel, When Sleeping Women Wake, has been published globally, translated into multiple languages and was longlisted for the ARA Historical Novel Prize (2025).
Buy books on Amazon
She is also the founder of yinfluence editorial, an agency that works with PoC, queer and neurodivergent writers, connecting them with editors and mentors who understand the stakes of telling stories from the margins.
She has been featured in The Canberra Times, The Australian, Mekong Review, Being Asian Australian, The Hong Kong Review, Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar & more.
Emma is working on her second novel with her extremely barky dachshund, lady, by her side. -
Holly Brunnbauer
Holly Brunnbauer is a multi-award-winning emerging fiction author with numerous accolades in writing competitions across Australia, New Zealand and the U.S.
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Holly writes stories filled with heart, humour and hijinks. Her signature style includes a strong commercial voice, quirky cast and putting the 'com' in rom-com.
She first caught the writing bug via blogging and later transitioned into copywriting. Holly's now a sought-after virtual assistant for published and aspiring authors.
Based in rural Victoria, she spends her time with her husband, two rambunctious boys and a cheeky pug, planning and building their off-grid country home. The outdoors is her happy place. -
Carly-Jay Metcalfe
Carly-Jay Metcalfe was born with cystic fibrosis and has survived a double-lung transplant at the age of twenty-one and faced a rare cancer at the age of thirty. Her debut memoir 'Breath' (UQP) was published in February 2024 to critical acclaim.
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Her writing has appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald, The Guardian, Kill Your Darlings, TEXT journal, and she has a forthcoming essay in Griffith Review.
At the 2024 Queensland Literary Awards, Breath won the Queensland Book of the Year People's Choice Award. -
Suzanne Leal
I'm the author of novels THE WATCHFUL WIFE, RUNNING WITH IVAN, THE DECEPTIONS, THE TEACHER'S SECRET and BORDER STREET.
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A regular interviewer and presenter at literary events and festivals, I was the senior judge for the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards from 2017 to 2019 and am now a board director of BAD Sydney Crime Writers Festival. I'm also a lawyer with a background in child protection, criminal law and refugee law. I'm also the weekly host of Thursday Book Club, a relaxed, friendly place to chat about books online, To join us, sign up (for free) on my website:www.suzanneleal.com.
I live in Sydney, Australia with my husband, David, my four children, a Japanese Spitz called Milly and a cat we accidentally acquired called Leo, -
JOANNE FEDLER
Joanne Fedler is an internationally bestselling author and witing mentor. She studied law at Yale and now lives in Australia.
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Anne Freeman
Anne Freeman writes award-winning contemporary fiction about women who are stuck in life and the extraordinary ways they shake themselves loose. Her stories are always engaging and sometimes funny with thrilling adventures, sexy escapades and friendships that uplift. Her hobbies include referring to herself in third person and making her family guffaw.
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