Byron Writers Festival is thrilled to announce the first wave of authors set to grace its stages at the 2024 festival this August.
Welcoming new Artistic Director Jessica Alice, this year’s Byron Writers Festival showcases the theme ‘From the ground up’ and will feature international bestsellers Trent Dalton and Jane Harper; acclaimed writer and farmer Bruce Pascoe; and Booker Prize winner Richard Flanagan.
The festival also welcomes Irish novelist Caoilinn Hughes; PEN award-winning author and poet Nam Le; playwright and novelist Suzie Miller; investigative journalist and debut novelist Louise Milligan; and local speculative fiction writer Mykaela Saunders.
This first announcement of celebrated guests gives a taste of things to come with Byron Writers Festival’s full program of more than 100 writers, thinkers and commentators to be revealed on 19 June. Byron Writers Festival 2024 will be held on beautiful Bundjalung land at the Bangalow Showground.
“The festival will host literary luminaries whose work represents deep wisdom, radical insight and thoughtful engagement with their readers. This first release is a glimpse of a richly diverse program with some of the biggest names and brilliant voices to discover,” said Artistic Director Jessica Alice.
“Our theme “From the ground up” will connect with Country, community and culture, from environmental movements to First Nations self-determination and the futures we build for ourselves today.”
Trent Dalton is a two-time Walkley Award–winning journalist and the international bestselling author of Lola in the Mirror, Love Stories and All Our Shimmering Skies. His books have sold over 1.3 million copies in Australia alone. The adaptation of his debut novel, Boy Swallows Universe, became Australia’s most watched Netflix TV show within three days of release and broke Top 10 lists in 60 countries across the world.
Bestselling writer Jane Harper’s books are published in forty territories worldwide, have sold over 3 million copies, and The Dry has been adapted into a major motion picture starring Eric Bana. Her most recent novel, Exiles, returned to policeman Aaron Falk from The Dry, investigating a mother’s disappearance at a regional festival.
Byron Writers Festival warmly welcomes back Dark Emu author Bruce Pascoe, whose books were festival favourites in 2019 and 2022. His latest book Black Duck: A Year at Yumburra, written with Lyn Harwood, is a deeply personal reflection on life, Country and the consequences of Dark Emu through six seasons on their farm. Pascoe and Harwood invite readers to imagine an inclusive future for Australia, one where we can honour our relationship with nature and greatly improve agriculture and forestry.
Tasmanian born writer Richard Flanagan is one of Australia’s most celebrated writers. His novels and non-fiction works have received numerous honours, including the Man Booker Prize for The Narrow Road to the Deep North. Flanagan’s latest work Question 7 is described by writer Tim Winton as “the strangest and most beautiful memoir I’ve ever read” and writer Peter Carey has proclaimed “Question 7 may just be the most significant work of Australian art in the last 100 years.”
International guest Caoilinn Hughes is a major literary voice hailing from Ireland. A poet and novelist, Hughes crafts intricate narratives that intertwine humour and keen observations on contemporary society. Equal parts hilarious and profound, her latest novel The Alternatives is a powerful story of four brilliant Irish sisters, orphaned in childhood, who scramble to reconnect when the oldest disappears into the Irish countryside.
In his first international release since the award-winning, bestselling collection of short stories The Boat, Nam Le returns with a book-length poem that honours every convention of diasporic literature before shattering the form itself. Singer and writer Nick Cave describes Nam Le’s 36 Ways of Writing a Vietnamese Poem as “Exquisitely crafted fire bombs of incandescent rage.”
Suzie Miller is an international playwright, screenwriter and novelist whose smash-hit one-woman play Prima Facie has won multiple prestigious awards and had sell out seasons on London’s West End and on Broadway in New York in 2023. Drawn from the internationally acclaimed play, Miller’s novel Prima Facie is a propulsive, raw look at the price victims pay for speaking out and the system that sets them up to fail. Prima Facie has been shortlisted for an ABIA Literary Fiction Award.
Walkley award-winning investigative journalist Louise Milligan will not only be discussing current affairs at Byron Writers Festival, she will also feature as a debut novelist with Pheasant’s Nest. A stunningly original debut, Pheasant’s Nest is a gripping crime novel that could only have been written by one of Australia’s sharpest investigative minds.
Mykaela Saunders is a Koori/Goori and Lebanese writer, teacher, researcher and editor. Their book Always Will Be won the David Unaipon Award and is an outstanding collection of speculative fiction imagining futures where Indigenous sovereignty is fully reasserted.
Byron Writers Festival takes place 9 – 11 August at the Bangalow Showground. The full program will be revealed on 19 June 2024. Early Bird 3-day passes are now on sale. For more information, visit: www.byronwritersfestival.com for details.
Image: Consulting the program at the 2023 Byron Writers Festival – photo by Kurt Petersen