Byron Writers Festival

Our 2025 Festival podcast series continues with the session Cherrywood. Join multi-award-winning author Jock Serong for a discussion of his new novel Cherrywood, an imaginative, darkly playful and deeply meaningful delight, a novel about legacy, community, wonder, love and reinvention. With Angela Catterns. Supported by The Book Room

Our 2025 Festival podcast series returns with a special preview of NORPA's Dinner Party at the End of the World. Join NORPA’s Artistic Director Julian Louis and Artistic Associate Heather Fairbairn for a special preview of Dinner Party at the End of the World—a powerful new work in development. This intimate, sound-infused sharing features readings by local NORPA artists, underscored live by accla...

Our 2025 Festival podcast series continues with the session Water: Our Life. From oceans to rivers, in flood and drought, for drinking, agriculture and industry, water is essential to life. Join Debra Dank (Terraglossia), Joëlle Gergis (Highway to Hell), Chris Hammer (The River) and James Sippo for an essential discussion on water and climate. With Erik Jensen. This session was supported by Southe...

Our Festival 2025 podcast series continues with another feature event: Guardian Australia's Are You Game Show. Play along with Guardian Australia’s signature game show as two teams of writers – led by Guardian Australia’s TikTok queen Matilda Boseley and features editor Lucy Clark, and hosted by culture editor Steph Harmon – battle it out for the ultimate prize: bragging rights. An extremely enjoy...

Our 2025 Festival podcasts series returns with the session Political Fictions. Join multi-award-winning authors Shankari Chandran (Unfinished Business) and Malcolm Knox (The First Friend) for an exploration of their thrilling new novels, set against high-stakes backdrops of politics, intrigue and danger. With Sunil Badami. This session was supported by The Holman Family

Our Festival 2025 series returns with the session We Are The Stars with Gina Chick and Mel Bampton. Get to know the real Gina Chick, inaugural winner of Alone Australia, and the story of her extraordinary, indomitable life in one of the most powerful, moving memoirs you will ever read, We Are the Stars. With Mel Bampton. This session was supported by Organic India.

Our Festival 2025 podcast series returns with one of our Feature Events: Beyond the Lines. Featuring powerhouse performer Ziggy Ramo, writer and singer Nardi Simpson, poetic provocateur David Stavanger, acclaimed Indian poet Akhil Katyal as well as Laurie May, Bebe Oliver, Kirli Saunders and Sarah Temporal. Plus winners from the Poets Out Loud Slam and Australian Poetry Slam heat. Presented with R...

Helen Garner in Conversation by Byron Writers Festival

#BWF2024Podcast Our ABC? Head back to the 2024 Byron Writers Festival with Kim Williams in conversation with Kerry O’Brien. In January 2024, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced media executive Kim Williams as the next chair of the ABC. Join Kim in conversation with Kerry O’Brien to reflect on his new role at the beloved national broadcaster and to share his vision for its future, as well as...

#BWF2024Podcast Prima Facie. Head back to the 2024 Byron Writers Festival with Suzie Miller in conversation with Steph Harmon. Drawn from the internationally acclaimed play, Prima Facie is a propulsive, raw look at the price victims pay for speaking out and the system that sets them up to fail. Join author and playwright Suzie Miller in conversation with Guardian culture editor Steph Harmon.

#BWF2024Podcast My Story. Head back to the 2024 Byron Writers Festival with Nicky Winmar in conversation with Gideon Haigh. Thirty years after creating one of the most memorable moments in sporting history, Indigenous AFL legend Nicky Winmar tells his story in a moving and compelling memoir, giving rare insight into his life

#BWF2024Podcast Unique. Head back to the 2024 Byron Writers Festival with Jodi Rodgers in conversation with Mandy Nolan. In Unique, beloved star of ABC TV’s award-winning Love on the Spectrum and disability rights advocate Jodi Rodgers shares stories from her three-decade career working with the autistic community and calls for a more inclusive and accepting society.

Stone Yard Devotional. Head back to the 2024 Byron Writers Festival with Charlotte Wood in conversation with Jill Eddington. Join Charlotte Wood to discuss her latest novel Stone Yard Devotional – longlisted for the 2024 Miles Franklin Award – a deeply moving novel about forgiveness, grief, and what it means to be ‘good’, from the award-winning author of The Natural Way of Things and The Weekend.

#BWF2024Podcast Slick: Australia’s Toxic Relationship with Big Oil. Head back to the 2024 Byron Writers Festival with Royce Kurmelovs in conversation with Isabelle Reinecke. Investigative journalist Royce Kurmelovs’ Slick is a riveting expose of the global oil industry’s multi-decade conspiracy to undermine efforts to address environmental devastation. It tells the stories of fire and flood surviv...

#BWF2024Podcast Question 7. Head back to the 2024 Byron Writers Festival with Richard Flanagan in conversation with Jill Eddington. Beginning at a love hotel by Japan’s Inland Sea and ending by a river in Tasmania, Question 7 is about the choices we make about love and the chain reaction that follows. Join Booker Prize-winning author Richard Flanagan to discuss this love song to his island home an...

Head back to the 2024 Byron Writers Festival with William McInnes in conversation with Mareike Hardy. Have you ever behaved like a drongo? Added mayo to a story? Lost your Reg Grundies? Join bestselling author and acclaimed actor William McInnes to discuss Yeah, Nah! – a collection of hilarious memories and moments inspired by Australia’s way with words.

#BWF2024Podcast Feminist Literatures. Head back to the 2024 Byron Writers Festival with Caoilinn Hughes, Melissa Lucasheko and Meena Kandasamy, chaired by Ashley Hay. Join three superstars of the festival to discuss the influences on their work and the way gender, race and class struggles inform their literary practice. Through fiction and poetry Caoilinn Hughes, Meena Kandasamy and Melissa Lucash...

#BWF2024Podcast Bob Brown In Conversation. Head back to the 2024 Byron Writers Festival with Bob Brown in conversation with Jan Fran. Join Bob Brown, former senator and parliamentary leader of the Australian Greens, for an intimate evening of discussion. What prompted Bob to write a young adult ‘novelette’, and what can it teach us about engaging young people in the fight for Earth’s future?

#BWF2024Podcast 36 Ways of Writing a Vietnamese Poem. Head back to the 2024 Byron Writers Festival with Nam Le in conversation with Caoilinn Hughes. Fifteen years after his best-selling, award-winning collection of stories The Boat, Nam Le returns to his great themes of identity and representation in a virtuosic debut book of poetry. 36 Ways of Writing a Vietnamese Poem is scathing, hilarious, and...

#BWF2024Podcast Lola In The Mirror. Head back to the 2024 Byron Writers Festival with Trent Dalton in conversation with Julia Baird. Bighearted, gritty, magical and moving, Lola in the Mirror is the irresistible new novel from international bestselling author of Boy Swallows Universe and All Our Shimmering Skies, Trent Dalton. Join this festival favourite in conversation with Julia Baird.

#BWF2024Podcast Always Will Be. Head back to the 2024 Byron Writers Festival and join Mykaela Saunders in conversation with Daniel Browning. In her stunningly inventive and thought-provoking collection Always Will Be, Mykaela Saunders poses the question: what might country, community and culture look like in the Tweed if Gooris reasserted their sovereignty?

#BWF2024Podcast Black Duck- A Year At Yumburra. Head back to the 2024 Byron Writers Festival with Lyn Harwood and Bruce Pascoe, chaired by Ashley Hay. Following the phenomenon of his bestselling Dark Emu, Bruce Pascoe and his partner Lyn Harwood invite us to imagine a different future for Australia, one where we can honour our relationship with nature and improve agriculture and forestry

#BWF2024Podcast For Life. Head back to the 2024 Byron Writers Festival with Aisla Piper in conversation with Charlotte Wood. When her husband doesn’t answer his phone, Ailsa Piper knows something is wrong. For Life is an unforgettable and moving insight into loss, hope and starting again, aided by the incredible healing power of nature and a community of unexpected angels.

#BWF2024Podcast America at War with Itself. Head back to the 2024 Byron Writers Festival with Nick Bryant in conversation with Chris Hanley. The Forever War: America’s Unending Conflict with Itself tells the story of America’s extreme polarisation 250 years in the making. Nick Bryant explains how the hate, divisiveness and paranoia we see today are a core part of America’s story.

#BWF2024Podcast Close To The Subject. Head back to the 2024 Byron Writers Festival with Daniel Browning in conversation with Rhianna Patrick. Close to the Subject is the collected works of one of Australia’s most accomplished media personalities. Chronicling his career since 2007, join Daniel Browning to reflect on his stellar career as a journalist, radio broadcaster, critic and interviewer.