Byron Writers Festival

Michael Robotham is a former investigative journalist and ghostwriter whose psychological thrillers have been translated into 25 languages and sold more than six million copies worldwide. He has won numerous prizes including the UK Crime Writer’s Gold Dagger the ABIA Fiction Prize and two Ned Kelly Awards.

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 been missing for nearly fifty years until a cleaner stumbled upon a cardboard box that had been misplaced and misfiled. As a ghostwriter he collaborated with politicians, pop stars, psychologists, adventurers and showbusiness personalities to help pen their autobiographies. Twelve of these non-fiction titles were Sunday Times bestsellers in the UK.

Michael lives on Sydney’s northern beaches, where he thinks dark thoughts in his  ‘cabana of cruelty’.

Kristina Olsson is an award-winning writer of fiction, non-fiction and journalism. Her 2013 memoir, Boy, Lost, garnered multiple national awards. Her new novel, Shell, set in Sydney against the backdrop of the building of Sydney Opera House and Australia’s entry into the Vietnam War, was published last October by the legendary Scribner and launched its Scribner Australia literary imprint.

Kristina’s previous work includes the novel The China Garden and the biography Kilroy Was Here. She also works as a journalist, mentor and teacher of creative writing, and is currently working on a new work of narrative non-fiction. She lives in Brisbane.

Jock Serong is a novelist and freelance writer currently based in Port Fairy, Victoria. He is the author of Quota, winner of the 2015 Ned Kelly Award for Best First Fiction; The Rules of Backyard Cricket, shortlisted for the 2017 Victorian Premier’s Award for Fiction, finalist of the 2017 MWA Edgar Awards for Best Paperback Original, and finalist of the 2017 INDIES Adult Mystery Book of the Year; and On the Java Ridge, shortlisted for the 2018 Indie Awards.

His latest novel, Preservation, was published in 2018 and has been shortlisted for the 2019 Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize.

Omar Sakr is a bisexual Arab-Australian poet, who has performed his work nationally and internationally and been published in English, Arabic, and Spanish. He lives in Sydney.