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2025 Writers
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Brian Castro
Brian Castro is the author of twelve novels, a volume of essays and a visual/poetic collaboration with painter John Young. His novels include the multi award-winning Double-Wolf and Shanghai-Dancing. He was the 2014 winner of the Patrick White Award for Literature and the 2018 Prime Minister’s Prize for Poetry. 
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Jaclyn Crupi
Jaclyn Crupi is a book editor, project manager, event moderator and bookseller. Jaclyn has worked in publishing and bookselling since 2002. She has a Bachelor of Arts (English and Cinema Studies) from Melbourne University and a Graduate Diploma in Editing and Publishing from RMIT.  Jaclyn has written numerous books for both children and adults. Her book, Garden Like a Nonno, was shortlisted for an Indie Book Award and longlisted for an Australian Book Industry Award. Her most recent children’s book, The ABC Kids Guide to Loving the Planet, won the Environment Award for Children’s Literature (Non Fiction). Jaclyn’s work has appeared in The Guardian, SBS Voices, At Home, The Canberra Times, Galah, PIP Magazine and Frankie, as well as the anthology Family published by Text Publishing.
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Ivor Indyk
Ivor Indyk is director of the Australian literary publisher Giramondo Publishing Company, and Emeritus Professor in the Writing and Society Research Centre at Western Sydney University. He was the founding editor of HEAT magazine and co-founder of the Sydney Review of Books. He has written essays on many aspects of Australian literature, art, architecture and literary publishing, including a monograph on David Malouf, and has a deep knowledge of Australian literature as a critic, teacher, editor and publisher. 
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Jeanine Leane 
Jeanine Leane is a Wiradjuri writer, poet, essayist and critic from south-west NSW. She is the recipient of the David Unaipon Award for her first novel Purple Threads; and her latest book is the poetry collection Gawimarra: Gathering was released in 2024. Jeanine's essays in the areas of Aboriginal literature, writing otherness, poetry, and creative nonfiction have been published widely. She was the recipient of the University of Canberra Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Poetry Prize, and she has won the Oodgeroo Noonuccal Prize for Poetry twice. In 2023 she won the David Harold Tribe Award for Poetry, Australia’s richest poetry prize. She has been the recipient of a Red Room Poetry Fellowship and two Australian Research Council Fellowships for research into Blak writing and storytelling. Jeanine taught Creative Writing and Aboriginal Literature for many years at the University of Melbourne. She is the poetry editor of Meanjin; and she continues to write between Ngunnawal/Ngambri Country and the East Kulin Nations of Naarm.
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Thuy On 
Thuy On is the Reviews and Literary Editor of ArtsHub and an arts journalist, critic and poet who’s written for a range of publications including The Guardian, The Saturday Paper, Sydney Review of Books, The Australian, The Age/SMH and Australian Book Review. She was the Books Editor of The Big Issue for 8 years and a former Melbourne theatre critic correspondent for The Australian. She has three collections of poetry published by the University of Western Australian Press (UWAP): Turbulence (2020), Decadence (2022) and Essence (2025). 
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Megan Cartwright
Megan Cartwright is an Australian poet, dramatist and literature teacher, based in Canberra (Ngunnawal and Ngambri Country). Her writing has featured in publications including Contemporary Verse 2, Cordite Poetry Review, Island Magazine, Porter House Review Quadrant Swim Meet Lit Mag, The Borough Verandah Literary & Art Journal. She was the 2024 recipient of Deakin University’s Matthew Rocco Poetry Prize for her poem ‘Self-Preservation in Three Parts’.
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Robyn Davidson
Robyn Davidson’s first book, Tracks, an account of her
journey alone, with camels, across Australia, was an international best-seller.  It won many awards, (Davidson is still the only woman to have won the prestigious Thomas Cook Travel Book Award), and was published in twenty languages. It has never been out of print. Originally destined for a career in classical music, she gave up her studies in order to travel.  She has been travelling and writing ever since, has published a novel, (Ancestors), an account of two years spent on migration with Indian nomads, (Desert Places), an anthology, (The Picador Book of Journeys), an extended essay on nomadism (No Fixed Address:  Nomads and the Fate of the Planet), and recently, a memoir, ‘Unfinished Woman’. As well she has overseen the production of her feature film script for the Australian Broadcasting Commission.  (Mail Order Bride).  Her literary reviews, travel essays and journalism have been published in international newspapers and magazines, including The National Geographic Magazine, Bunte, Sterne, Geo, London Sunday Times, Guardian, TLS, and Granta, and been included in anthologies including Best Australian Essays.  She has given lectures at the New York Public Library, the Smithsonian Institute, and the Geographical Society. 
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Erik Jensen
Erik Jensen is an award-winning journalist, biographer, poet and screenwriter. He is the founding editor of The Saturday Paper and editor-in-chief of Schwartz Media. His first book, Acute Misfortune: The Life and Death of Adam Cullen, won the Nib Prize for Literature and was shortlisted for the Walkley Book Award and the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards. A film of the book, for which he cowrote the screenplay, won The Age Critics Prize at the Melbourne International Film Festival. He is also the author of On Kate Jennings, I Said the Sea Was Folded and Angry at Breakfast. 
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Prithvi Varatharajan 
Prithvi Varatharajan writes poems and criticism (essays, scholarly articles, and book reviews). His debut collection of poems and prose, Entries, was published in 2020 by Cordite Books. That year he was also a recipient of an Emerging Critics Fellowship at the Sydney Review of Books, through which he developed his longer-form literary criticism. Prithvi currently works in customer service but has previously worked as an audiobook producer and as a freelance producer for ABC Radio National’s Poetica – this program formed the topic of his doctoral thesis. He has been a judge of the Mary Gilmore award for poetry and of the Emerging Critics Fellowship at the SRB; he was a convening judge of the 2024 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Poetry.
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Damon Young 
Damon Young is an award-winning philosopher and author. His fourteen books of nonfiction and children's fiction are published internationally and translated into twelve languages. He has also published short fiction, poetry, and essays. ​

A selection of guests since 1984
Celeste Abad-Jugo
Alexis Abola
Robert Adamson
Jordie Albiston
Jeffrey Alexander
Stephanie Alexander
Louise Allan
Max Allen
Chris Andrews
Shokoofeh Azar
Emilie Zoey Baker
Benjamin Barney
Larissa Behrendt 
Peter Beilharz
Judith Beveridge
Tony Birch
Carmel Bird
Judith Bishop
Pamela Bone
Nic Brasch
Judith Brett
Rofel Brion
Michelle Cahill
Paul Carter
Gary Catalano
Eileen Chong
Mark Cladis
Anna Clark
Inga Clendinnen
JM Coetzee 
Alfredo Conde
Kerry Conway
Judith Nangala Crispin
Alison Croggon
Sophie Cunningham
Robyn Davidson
Luke Davies
Bruce Dawe
Sarah Day
Richard Denniss
Robert Dessaix
Gerald Diffey
​Reg Dodd
Joe Dolce
Will Eaves
Ali Cobby Eckerman
Stephen Edgar
​
​Bob Ellis



Wesley Enoch
​
Matthew Evans
Diane Fahey
Tracy Farr
Janine Fraser
Morag Fraser
Alan Frost
Raimond Gaita
Helen Garner
Moreno Giovannoni
Andrea Goldsmith
Anna Goldsworthy
Kerryn Goldsworthy
Peter Goldsworthy
​​​​​Lisa Gorton
​​Alan Gould
​Jamie Grant
Robert Gray
James Griffin
Charlotte Guest
Gideon Haigh
Marion Halligan
Sonja Hartnett

Ihab Hassan
Per Henningsgard
Barry Hill
​Melinda Hinkson
Jane Hirshfield 
Karen Hitchcock
Philip Hodgins
Trevor Hogan
Katie Holmes
Lucy Holt
Chloe Hooper
Coral Hull
Ivor Indyk
Clive James
Daniel James
Lisa Jacobson
Linda Jaivin
Julie Janson
Kate Jennings
Gail Jones
Nicholas Jose
Evelyn Juers
Chet Kane
Paul Kane
Tina Kane
​
Yumna Kassab
​Stuart Kells
Thomas Keneally

Anne Kenney 
​Cate Kennedy
Krissy Kneen
Jamie King Holden
Graeme Kinross-Smith
Christopher Koch  
Amitava Kumar
Anthony Lawrence
Geoff Lawrence
Nam Le
Bronwyn Lea
Michelle Leggott  
Geoffrey Lehmann
James Ley
Bella Li
Melissa Lucashenko
Olga Lorenzo
Kim Mahood
Shane Maloney
David Malouf
David Marr
Ian McBryde
David McCooey
Meme McDonald
Malcolm McKinnon
Rhyll McMaster
Michael Meehan
Angela Meyer
​Kate Middleton
​Alex Miller 
Drusilla Modjeska
​Liz Moore 
Frank Moorhouse
​Sam Morley 
Marjon Mossammaparast
Marie Munkara
Les Murray
Patrice Newell
Peter Newman
Dennis Nicholson
Mark O’Connor
Sharon Olds
Jan Owen
Jillian Pattinson
Geoff Page
​Tim Parks
Bruce Pascoe
​AS Patric

Elliot Perlman
PiO
​
Dorothy Porter
Peter Porter
Boori Prior
Sian Prior
Belinda Probert
Alice Pung
Peter Robb
Peter Rose
Nicolas Rothwell
Mary Jo Salter
Stephen Sartarelli
George Seddon
Teonga Sendama
Ronald Sharp
Janet Shaw
Craig Sherborne
Naomi Shihab Nye
Alex Skovron
Jane Smiley
Bernard Smith
Peter Steele
Sian Supski  
Maria Takolander
Christina Thompson
Carrie Tiffany
Christos Tsiolkas
Maria Tumarkin
Peter Vale 
Ellen Van Neerven
Chris Wallace-Crabbe
Clinton Walker
David Walker
Don Watson
Ian Wedde
Simon West
Petra White
Terri-Ann White 
Tim Winton  
John Wolseley
​Charlotte Wood
Alexis Wright
Clare Wright 
​Alice Zaslavsky​
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  • Home
  • WRITERS
  • SPECIAL EVENTS
  • PROGRAM
    • PAST PROGRAMS
  • The Murray Talk
  • AWARDS
    • PHILIP HODGINS MEMORIAL MEDAL
    • TINA KANE EMERGENT WRITER
  • GALLERY
  • Donation Details
  • Contact