...To The Bitter End

David Burton is an award-winning writer from Brisbane. He has written over thirty professionally produced theatrical works, including several pieces for the youth and education sector, and directed productions for the Queensland Music Festival. His memoir, How to Be Happy, won the Text Prize for Young Adult and Children’s Writing in 2014. The Man in the Water is his first novel.

Taryn Bashford is the author of The Harper Effect, a young adult novel published by Pan Macmillan in Australia and Skyhorse Publishing in the USA (2018), as well as a second novel, The Astrid Notes (2019), also published by Pan Macmillan. Taryn speaks at numerous literary conferences and regularly works as an Author-in-Residence conducting writing workshops with high schools. In addition, she is a writing mentor for unpublished writers with Queensland Writers Centre and the instigator of the new Friends of Libraries Book Feasts – a community event for booklovers. Taryn is currently working on her PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Queensland. Taryn hails from England but has lived in four countries including nearly twenty years in Australia. She now lives in Brisbane with her teen children and a dog who loves cheese. 

Richard Yaxley is the author of eight novels, as well as many short stories and poems. He is a former winner of the Prime Ministers Literary Award and the Queensland Premiers Literary Award, both for Young Adult Literature, and his novel This Is My Song was the 2020 ACU Book of the Year. A secondary school teacher for over thirty years, Richard has master’s degrees in human rights and cultural studies. In 2012, he was awarded an Order of Australia Medal for services to education, literature and performing arts.