This year’s festival celebrates some of the most vital and impactful storytelling in Australian literature, with a dedicated program of First Nations writers whose work spans historical fiction, picture books and Indigenous knowledge and whose voices are reshaping how this country understands itself.
Tasma Walton, award-winning actor and proud Boonwurrung woman, arrives at the festival with her landmark novel I Am Nannertgarrook, winner of the 2025 ARA Historical Novel Prize and shortlisted for the 2025 Nib Literary Award. Based on the true story of Walton’s own ancestor, the novel follows a woman kidnapped by sealers and enslaved far from her homeland, whose spirit refuses to bow. The novel memorialises not only the stories of Walton’s ancestors but immerses readers in continuing Boonwurrung language and culture, reminding us that this history floods our present day.
Julie Janson, a Burruberongal woman of the Darug Aboriginal nation, is a novelist, playwright, and poet. She appears at the festival to speak on her award-winning novels Compassion, on the lives of Aboriginal women in 1800s New South Wales, and Benevolence as a counter-narrative to colonial history in Australian literature. Julie will also debut her latest poetry collection My Kaathi Sister telling the story of the suffering and resilience of a people.
Victor Steffensen, Tagalaka man, author, filmmaker and traditional knowledge practitioner who co-founded Firesticks Alliance, comes to Byron with his new book The Knowledge, offering a positive pathway for healing the planet based on traditional Indigenous knowledge systems. Endorsed by environmentalist David Suzuki, the book carries a simple yet profound central belief that humans are part of the natural world, not its masters, and that the solutions to catastrophic wildfires, floods and the climate crisis already exist within the cultures of First Peoples.
Among the 150 writers appearing at the festival, explore new books from diverse First Nations writers and poets including local Bunjalung woman Ella Noah Bancroft, Melissa Lucashenko, poet Dakota Feirer, viral sensation Tom Forrest (Outback Tom), cultural leadership expert Paul Callaghan, Arrernte Warlpiri woman Marie Elena Ellis, NRL star Sam Thaiday, and many more.
• Program and tickets at byronwritersfestival.com.
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