One of the key themes running through 2018 Byron Writers Festival will be mental health, with this year’s line-up designed to draw awareness to the wide spectrum of causes, effects and conditions in this complex area of our lives. Katinka Smit casts an eye over the program and details what to expect.
Ahead of the publication of her new picture book Archie and the Bear, local children's author Zanni Louise looks at how the best children's books allow room for interpretation, ensuring that young readers become engaged, absorbed and imaginative as they follow a multi-layered story.
How does a career in journalism affect a writer when they come to create fiction? Journalist-come-novelist Russell Eldridge offers his take on the question to northerly editor Barnaby Smith.
Byron Writers Festival's new initiative, the Members' Book Club, held its inaugural event on 16 March when Marele Day's Lambs of God was the subject of discussion. Attendee Louise Heywood reports on a lively evening of literary conversation.
Osamah Sami is a multilingual Melbourne-based writer and actor born in Iran to Iraqi parents. Sami's forte is comedy, with his memoir Good Muslim Boy winning the NSW Premier's Literary Award in 2016. He is also a screenwriter and poet. He spoke to Katinka Smit at Byron Writers Festival 2016.
Northerly editor Barnaby Smith takes us through his guide to some of the more noteworthy, and perhaps overlooked, examples of musicians turning their hand to fiction.
The winner of the inaugural Nancy Fairfax Artist-in-Residence for Established Writers was Henri 'Renoir' Rennie, who stayed for a week in the studio at Tweed Regional Gallery in Murwillumbah in early February to devote himself exclusively to focused writing time. Here, Henri reflects on a transportive week, during which progress was most certainly made.
