Writing Family and Loss

Rhiannon Wilde is a writer and former Brisbane high school teacher. Her debut novel, Henry Hamlet’s Heart, won the Queensland Literary Awards Glendower Award for an Emerging Queensland Writer, was shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards – Ethel Turner Prize for Young People’s Literature, longlisted for an Indie Book Award and was a CBCA Notable Book. She can usually be found drinking coffee dressed like a slightly subdued Elton John, and lives with her partner on a hill near the sea.

Danielle Binks is a Melbourne-based writer and literary agent with Jacinta di Mase Management. In 2017, she edited and contributed to Begin, End, Begin, an anthology of new Australian young adult writing inspired by the #LoveOzYA movement, which won the ABIA Book of the Year for Older Children (Ages 13+). The Year the Maps Changed, Danielle’s bestselling middle-grade novel, was a 2021 Children’s Book Council of Australia (CBCA) Notable Book. And her 2021 YA novel The Monster of Her Age won in the Young Adult category of the 2022 Indie Book Awards. Her new middle grade novel out in 2023 is Six Summers of Tash & Leopold. Danielle is also teaching Fiction & Young Adult Writing in the Associate Degree of Professional Writing and Editing at RMIT University.

Nova Weetman is a widely published writer of fiction, non-fiction and screenplays. She has published seventeen novels for children about friendship, class, identity and belonging, and her books have been shortlisted for many awards and published internationally. Her recent essays on aspects of grief and loss have been published in The Guardian and The Age, leading to her appearing on Radio National’s Conversations. Nova has also published short fiction in Island, Mslexia, Kill Your Darlings and Overland, and worked as a screenwriter for television and film.

Pauline McLeod is a teacher-librarian with a Master of Arts in Children’s Literature and the Children’s and YA Literature Specialist at Riverbend Books, Bulimba for the past decade. Pauline is a committee member of the CBCA (QLD branch) and has been a judge of the Older Reader’s category of the CBCA Book of the Year awards. She is a former member of the Brisbane Writer’s Festival LoveYA committee and is involved in creating the BookPeople annual Kid’s Reading Guide. Pauline has a special interest in YA fiction and is passionate about promoting and encouraging Australian stories, particularly through working with schools and teacher-librarians.