Adaptations

Trent Dalton is the author of the international bestselling, multi-award-winning Boy Swallows Universe (HarperCollins, 2018), the national number-one bestseller All Our Shimmering Skies (HarperCollins, 2020) and the number-one bestseller, and 2022 Indie Book of the Year Award, Love Stories (HarperCollins, 2021). His books have sold over a million copies since 2018.

Holly Ringland is a writer, storyteller, and television presenter. Her internationally-bestselling debut novel, The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart, has been published in 30 countries/territories and will stream globally in 2023 as a seven-part series on Amazon Prime, starring Sigourney Weaver. Holly is the co-host of ABC TV’s series, Back To Nature, which aired to critical acclaim in 2021. Holly’s bestselling new novel, The Seven Skins of Esther Wilding, is out now in Australia and New Zealand.

Iconic Australian actor Bryan Brown became an international success in the early eighties with critical acclaim from performances in a stream of Australian hits and Hollywood productions including The Thorn Birds, Gorillas in the Mist, FX, Along Came Polly, Two Hands and Cocktail. In a 40-year career, Bryan has appeared in over 80 films and worked in some 25 countries. This achievement earned him the prestigious Longford Lyell Award at the 2018 AACTAs recognising his contribution to Australian cinema. In 2021 Bryan published a book of short stories, Sweet Jimmy, to great critical acclaim. He will publish his first novel, The Drowning, later in 2023.

This is Witi Ihimaera’s 3rd appearance at Brisbane Writers Festival and he’s delighted to be back. A New Zealand writer of Maori descent he celebrates his 50th Anniversary as a writer with a newly revised version of Tangi (1973), the first novel by a Maori. Highly regarded internationally for his astonishing outpouring of fiction, films, edited works and plays he will be appearing in celebratory events in the USA (a children’s book congress celebrating The Whale Rider), Canada (an Ihimaera 4-film retrospective at the Presence Autochtone Film Festival), Germany (a Big Read Festival at Gutenberg University) and France (a month-long book and film tour). The Whale Rider is the most translated New Zealand novel. Another of his books, White Lies will be published soon in an Ethiopian Amharic Semitic edition. He has many national and international awards including a Chevalier des Arts and Lettres for services to indigenous literature. He lives in New Zealand.

Venero Armanno is a novelist and academic at The University of Queensland. He has published twelve books and was the winner of the Queensland Premiers Award for Best Fiction Book (2002) with The Volcano.