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.

Writer of 16 books for children and young adults, including Sick Bay, The Edge of Thirteen and The Jammer. Her books are CBCA notables and have been shortlisted for the NSW Premier's History Award, the Readings Children’s Prize, the ABIA Awards, the Speech Pathologist Awards, the YABBA Awards and the Sakura Medal in Japan. She has won an ABIA Award for The Edge of Thirteen, and YABBA and Koala Awards for Sick Bay. Writer of Film Victoria short films Ripples and Mr Wasinski’s Song (AWGIE nomination and winner Best Australian Short at MIFF). Short fiction published in Overland, Mslexia, Kill Your Darlings, Wet Ink and Island and articles in The Guardian, Island and Fairfax Media. Nova is a regular on ABC Radio Melbourne talking about historic children’s books in Australia.

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.